After a months-long hiatus, it’s finally AMA time again. We’ll be doing it right here on Substack on Thursday, August 20th at 8:30 PM ET/5:30 PM PT. I’ll be making a big (good!) announcement and then answering any questions you might have about whatever.

(If you can't make that time slot but still want in on this, never fear: the replay will be posted both on here and on YouTube after the fact)

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If you have questions, there are three good ways to send them:

1. Post them in the comments

2. If you received this as an email, hit reply and lay it on me

3. Submit questions anonymously at NGL

   (Note: I lost access to the old NGL when I switched phones so this is a different link than in previous AMAs: if you sent a question to the old link in the last several months please resend and I'll answer it)

See you there!

Laura

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Here are some pictures you should see:

You can make great money without a college degree, but the odds are never in your favor; those with degrees still earn, on average, twice as much as people without one. Unfortunately, this key component of upward mobility has become very, very expensive. Tuition skyrocketed for three decades, then stabilized at obscenely high rates from 2018 to 2024. Now, under Trump’s careful stewardship, the cost of a college degree is spiking once again: students saw increases of as much as 10 percent in 2025. Tuition aside, students have to eat. A study by Temple University found that 59 percent of college students have experienced food or housing insecurity. Fourteen percent have experienced homelessness. Black and indigenous students experienced these problems at 75 percent. It’s hard to do well in classes when you’re hungry.

Thankfully, Our President is taking decisive action to help kids attain the kind of education that will allow them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

I am, of course, referring to the Patriot Games.

The Patriot Games, for those who do not obsessively follow the Trump administration’s every move, was an athletic competition in which 100 kids between the ages of 14 and 17 competed for two $125k scholarships—one for each of the two state-approved genders—courtesy of Trump’s Freedom 250 bribe pool. To volunteer as tribute, all these kids had to do was fill out an application with their social media handles and a video submission that answered questions like “What does being an American mean to you?” and “Describe a moment when you felt especially grateful to be American.” Those selected then travelled to Geneva, Ohio for three days of games at the Spire Olympic Training Facility, which is where I found myself on Tuesday, August 11th, a few hours before the finale took place.

A word about tickets to this finale, which were free and which I applied for immediately after receiving their first offer on July 30th. The administration would send six more messages about tickets over the next 12 days, with increasing frequency as time went on. “URGENT: 2026 Patriot Games Finale Registration Closes Soon,” an August 5th email blared. Two days later, they made a surprise announcement: Trump himself would make an appearance at the Games. What more incentive could you need to fly into Cleveland, Ohio and then drive an hour to Geneva to watch high-schoolers duke it out for a college scholarship?

Throughout this entire period, the Patriot Games schedule remained static: doors open at 3:00 PM and close at 6:00, event starts an hour later. At 9:40 AM on the day of the finale, however, we received a dramatically revised schedule. Doors would open at 10:00 AM—20 minutes after this schedule hit our inboxes—and close at 4:00 PM. Those who arrived before 2:00 PM would have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to tour the facilities where the rest of the competition took place. First come, first served. Entrance not guaranteed.

I received this letter somewhere in Iowa while fueling up a car stuffed to the gills with boxes, bags, and a table that absolutely should not fit in the back of a Toyota Corolla and which took me half an hour to tetris in there. I’m driving a bunch of stuff from Portland, Oregon to New York City and I had the trip planned down to the minute. If everything went well, I would hit Geneva at exactly 3:00 PM. Since there’s no way to move that timeline up without triple-digit speeds, I figure one of two things is about to happen:

1. I'm not going to get in

2. So few people have signed up for tickets that they're trying to create false urgency, then get a head count at 4 to see if they need to recruit bleacher fillers

As I pull into Spire Academy several hours later, it becomes immediately clear that Scenario #2 is the winner. The ticket lists two overflow lots for latecomers, but the main one is half-empty. All I have to do is get past the bomb-sniffing German Shepherd inspecting every vehicle: something I have never encountered in five years of attending right-wing events. MAGA is having a very chill time, folks. They’re fine.

I park and walk to the entrance—which, one hour before doors allegedly close, looks like this:

I walk through security and follow the directions of a cheerful young volunteer to the enormous rectangular Olympic Training Center, where I am not asked to present my ticket and where I park myself on the mostly-empty bleachers to gaze upon the American Ninja Warrior training course that would determine which of eight finalists would receive a scholarship and which would go home with a participation medal.

We’d been told to wear jerseys and shirts from our home state, but most people opted for MAGAware or TPUSA shirts instead. Of those in state shirts, nearly all were repping the Ohio State Buckeyes, which makes sense, since who other than Ohioans would travel to Geneva for such a dubious competition? As with most Trumpy events, the vast majority of attendees were Gen X. They were also—and you are going to be shocked to learn this—almost entirely white.

I settled in for three long hours of waiting. The reception was abysmal, but Spire Academy had wifi, which you could use if you agreed to content surveillance. In the name of live-posting the event, and against my better judgment, I accepted. The people behind me declined. What if some foreign country had infiltrated the event and set up this wifi to gather information on American patriots? This logic boggles the mind, but I put it to you: who’s stupider, the people who declined surveillance for a silly reason or the fool who clicked yes for a mediocre one?

Bored, I asked the people next to me to watch my seat and went to grab some snacks from the merch/concessions area at the entrance. I passed on a Chick-Fil-A sandwich and popcorn in favor of something caffeinated or at least full of sugar. For some reason, Trump events exclusively have Pepsi products, and I’m sorry to be this person but I would rather drink bleach than a goddamn Pepsi, so I contented myself with a root beer and a bottle of water.

The merch area next to the concessions was shockingly barren for a Trump event. The man at the display rack told us we could get our state flag custom-printed on the sleeve of the beige sweatshirt unless we wanted Ohio or California. I asked him about this, and he told me the logistics people just ordered 40 of every state. For an event in Geneva, Ohio. Of course.

Behind the bleachers, an astro-turf field stretched from end to end of the enormous rectangular building, half-shrouded in darkness. As I cracked my root bear, the kids began running onto the field, each in a patriotic jersey numbered between 1 and 100, which did not remind me of Squid Game at all. They sat in a semicircle around a folding table loaded with treats and several adults in white track suits. One of them issued some sort of instruction, then began asking questions and tossing treats to whichever kid answered correctly.

People continued to trickle in well after the doors allegedly closed until, by showtime, the stands looked mostly full if you squinted and didn’t look at the half-empty bleachers just behind the beginning of the course—and I do mean half-empty; the event coordinators herded the audience into the right half only for the cameras. Several people from my section were recruited to move to the VIP bleachers at the middle of the course so the place didn’t look so desolate. With creative editing and camera-work, this event might actually look packed.

I was very skeptical as to whether the big man himself would show up, but I was wrong; as the thrum of a helicopter filled the stadium, the man next to me told me Trump was supposed to arrive by chopper. A few minutes later, the announcers confirmed the rumor: Trump was in the building and would lead the eight finalists onto the field himself. “I guess that means they won’t be running,” I posted: the last thing to get past those infernal metal beams before the wifi gave out completely. I turned my attention to the monitors above our heads, which began to play footage from earlier in the event: a bizarre mishmash of sports that included a T-ball bunt and throwing footballs at moving targets. The kids went all-out. $125K is a lot of money.

At last the event began. The 92 non-finalists marched onto the field, state flags held aloft, then ditched them and marched past TPUSA-style pyrotechnics1 to take their seats inside the Presidential box and above it. Shortly thereafter, Trump himself walked onto the field, followed by eight kids like so many ducklings. All eight finalists were white. Five of them were blonde.

Trump walked to the large platform at the middle and surveilled the applauding crowd, then saluted as the National Anthem began to play. What he was saluting, I could not tell you: not a single American flag in the place, not even the monitors above my head. I guess the Star-Spangled Banner does not yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. Then again, I think we knew that already.

The Ninja Warrior course had two tracks; the semi-finals for each state-approved gender would consist of two side-by-side races, followed by a final run between the victors to determine the winner. At the end of it, two of these kids would walk away with something every kid should get: an education that won’t bankrupt them or leave them battling food insecurity. A game against hunger, if you will.

All the kids did well. Three fell off the course, but got up and finished anyway—not Ninja Warriors rules, but I respect the commitment. At the top of the final obstacle (the infamous 14-foot Warp Wall, but with rock climbing holds to make it easier), the two contestants hugged it out, every single time. They’d been on the same team for the tug-of-war event that secured their place in the finals, one of the girls told the announcer. They all wanted the best for each other.

The girl’s final was close. The final race for the boys—spoiler alert—was not. This clean-cut blonde boy from Utah (whose name, I kid you not, is Rockwell) pulled ahead of the Florida boy early and widened the gap until his opponent fell off an obstacle in his haste to catch up. Rockwell reached the top, slammed the buzzer, and celebrated…but by the time his opponent reached the top, his smile was gone. Florida was grinning and tearing up as they hugged but Utah looked serious, nervous. It’s dangerous to project emotions onto someone from a bleacher seat, but it sure looked like the weight of the thing that had just happened was bearing down hard on Rockwell’s shoulders. Because he’d won, someone else had lost.

I found the Patriot Games somewhat hard to watch. There was no second place; if you ain’t first, you’re last. Crueler things have happened, of course, than falling just a few seconds short of a college education. Maybe these kids have families who can afford it, I don’t know. It still got to me. I wish there’d at least been second place.

When interviewed, the winners of the semi-finals and finals almost all thanked God for their victory—not in an Oscars way, but an “all glory to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” kind of way. The crowd liked this very much, and one suspects the powers that be selected for this specific genre of religiosity.

Trump spoke during halftime and again just after the finals: two brief interviews with an ESPN host in high gold heels and a red dress. Doubtless the whole thing was a welcome change of pace for our President: no questions about Iran, or Israel, or the economy, or the reflecting pool, or the $900 million ballroom: just sports and sycophancy. “What teams do you think will do well in the NFL this year?” Trump lists off a few teams—the Patriots, the Rams, the Giants. “Great analysis, Mr. President.”

When all was over, the eight finalists stood up on the platform and Trump presented the two winners with an enormous gold trophy and a novelty check, which the announcer instructed them to hold aloft for the cameras. Pyrotechnics and confetti erupted as the crowd cheered, YMCA played, Trump did his little dance…and it was over.

Other articles—the kind that actually feature quotes from attendees instead of vibes and observations—suggest that many spectators came out primarily to see the President, which might explain the tension in the air as everyone filed out. Or maybe that’s just me. I’d driven 38 of the last 51 hours to make this event in time, I was very tired, and malaise was creeping in. Oh well. Nothing that a tall boy, a Chipotle burrito, and 10 hours of sleep can’t cure.

Nothing of great significance happened at Trump’s Patriot Games. Two kids got what the announcer correctly described as “life-changing money,” 98 kids got medals and memories that were hopefully good, a couple thousand people sat in some bleachers and listened to Trump talk about football for a few minutes, no one got seriously injured—at least, as far as I know. The corruption was garden-variety, the Christian Nationalist overtones no worse than usual. Just another day in dystopian America.

The thing that disquieted me the most, oddly enough, was a trash can—the one in the picture at the beginning of this article. Beneath large print that reads TRASH ONLY, an AI-generated picture of a girl looking nobly to the side with a background that appeared to be a colosseum on fire and the words “2026 Patriot Games.”

And maybe I’m reading too much into things but idk, you tell me:

The Hunger Games jokes came in thick and fast from the moment the administration announced this event, and you could dismiss the Hunger-Games-inspired trash can as a troll….but for whose eyes to see? Not the press: there was no way to apply for credentials, which implies an invite-only situation. Not the attendees, (almost) all of whom presumably support Trump.

It really feels like the administration watched the Hunger Games movies and was like, “this is cool. We should do this.”

Desperation as entertainment. Then again, what isn’t? Gambling addiction is skyrocketing thanks to legalized sports betting and online casinos and total ad saturation, and you would not believe how many cannabis billboards I saw driving cross-country to this event—or maybe you would, since every state that’s legalized it has pot shops on every corner now. I smoke up and play poker and think these things should be legal….but not on your phone, and not as a soporific in this era of increasing economic despair. We had UFC on the White House lawn and Hunger Games in Ohio and maybe we’ll get our own colosseum someday, but is there really a need for it when we’ve all become gladiators on social media? We’re angry, we’re strung out, and over 40 percent of Americans believe the future will be even worse. The American dream of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps was always out of reach for most people, but at least it was a good dream. Now, the dream is: get lucky. Win big. Escape the Matrix and exploit everyone beneath you. No one’s going from grocery clerk to CEO in 21st century America. Those days, to the extent they ever existed, are over.

Desperate people make for good entertainment. They make good subjects too. People barely hanging on aren’t going to take risks, speak out, or unionize, especially if they’ve become convinced that AI can replace them. It’s hard to think straight when your cortisol is high, when you spend so much of your time worrying about making rent or staying out of the hospital. Desperation is good business, and business is booming.

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Little America has many things. You can buy a dreamcatcher with a skin drum where the string usually is, painted with a wolf or a horse or some other creature of this land. You can buy a children's chapter book about an indigenous boy and his adventures, or a painted cattle skull. You can buy a card game --the kind that are good for road trips, from an age before iPads were a thing. You can buy a tiger puzzle in the shape of an actual tiger. You can buy a T-shirt with the penguin cartoon character next to a "Straight Outta Wyoming" graphic and the words "Little America" below it all, which I bought for $24. How could I not? It's pure, uncut Americana, and my love of this particular genre of kitsch exists in that horseshoe area where irony wraps around into earnestness.

You can buy every kind of junk food at Little America, including flavors of popcorn that are an affront to God himself: rootbeer float, strawberry-banana, blueberry. You can buy turquoise jewelry, because it is a law that every store in the Western states must sell turquoise. You can buy an Alice in Wonderland clockwork house that allegedly makes a sound when you press on the first stair. I did not press the stair. It is 1:30 AM, and I do not want to terrorize the poor, lonely overnight clerk.

I am at Little America because I am driving from Portland, Oregon to Geneva, Ohio to watch Trump’s Patriot Games finale live. It calls to me with a siren wail that I tried and failed to ignore. I do not have time to waste looking at penguins and clockwork houses. I need to be sleeping or moving. I am barely going to make it as it is.

But of course I look. I look at all of this, every time I drive through here. It's this strange little oasis that time can't touch, a place the zeitgeist overlooked. With the sole exception of two small chud stickers, nothing in this sprawling gift shop/restaurant/convenience store is at all political. Yes, yes, I know: everything is political, the dubious indigenous souvenirs and books are political, I know. I know. But I also know that you know what I mean. You'd never know there was a culture war brewing. That's rare in Wyoming. Frankly, it's rare everywhere.

This Emperor Penguin stands guard over a tiny slice of a country also rapidly succumbing to the elements: preserved here, like the penguin, against all odds. A world of nice things, pure things, corny kitschy things that exist for no other reason than to make someone happy for a little while. Earnest Hemingway wrote a short story entitled "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" and things don't work out so well for people in that story and yet this is what they wanted. This is what they hoped to find. A clean, well-lighted place.

I should not be writing this in the parking lot of Little America. I should be catching the hour of sleep I intended to grab before hitting the road and resuming my journey to the Hunger Games. Really, it's an excuse to stay here a little longer. A few extra minutes under the protection of this animal spirit. This lingering reflection of something gone forever.

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Note: the original version of this post stated that Flannery O’Connor wrote “A Clean Well-Lighted Place,” except thanks to phone autocorrect it was “Flannery O'Connell” for that illusive double-blunder. The extremely tired author regrets these errors and thanks the people in the comments who pointed them out with such gentle politeness.

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The trouble started shortly after I occupied the deserted Department of Justice booth at the Great American State Fair and began to charge my cell phone.

I don’t know how long the Department of Justice booth sat empty before I got there, or who stripped it bare of everything save three folding chairs, a scuffed card table, and a battered backdrop held in…

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Unlike most of the things I write, this article has a heavy visual component. I highly recommend skimming the print version and checking out the embedded videos and pictures. Here are a few of the most important ones:

…

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(Please forgive the background mess and poor quality video on my end; this was recorded in a guest room on about 2 hours of sleep)

If this interview makes you want to read the book, you can (and should!) purchase it wherever fine books are sold.

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I've written about it for Slate Magazine, and you can read it here if you would like to. Click through to learn more about the many fun activities on offer, including:

• Periodically revving a Ram truck until the tires burn off and the air …

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Derrick Lewis, one of the fighters fighting at UFC 250 tonight, once took off his shorts post-fight, revealing black compression boxer briefs. When asked why, he simply replied: “my balls was hot.” Never in my life have I related so much to a sentiment that does not apply to me at all.

I'm at the second day of UFC F…

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On the afternoon of May 2nd, three ICE agents broke Chidozie Wilson Okeke’s car window. Okeke, a Nigerian man who overstayed his tourist visa, refused to cooperate—who would cooperate at this point?—and so one agent moved to drag him from his car while the other pointed a taser at close range. He demanded a lawyer. Then the assault began, and all he could do was scream. “Somebody help me! They are killing me!”

The DHS claims they had to beat Okeke until he required medical attention because their victim attacked ICE agents and tried to hit them with his car. I don't mind being lied to at this point, I kind of expect it, but why must it always be the same lie? It’s a flex. The truth matters so little at this point that the lowest-effort falsehood will suffice. Lest you somehow doubt: here’s a video taken by a Brooklyn resident that shows Okeke doing neither thing.

What happened to Okeke in Bushwick last month has happened to hundreds of thousands since Trump took office. Violent, extralegal abductions are an everyday part of life in America now, which is great news for the Trump administration, because it gets them that `much closer to their end goal: mass acceptance of violent, extralegal abductions.

We do not have to like these abductions to accept them. We can hate them, even protest them, as long as we think of them as normal. Mosquitos on a hiking trip. Rain on your wedding day. Police beating the hell out of people they consider subhuman.

Speaking of which: ICE would really, really like you to believe there’s no real difference between their agents and your local cops, because if you start thinking of their violence as cop violence, their violence becomes normal. The DHS can’t get through a single press conference without loud and outraged assertions that ICE aren’t armed paramilitary thugs, but rather good, hard-working law enforcement agents protecting and serving the American people. Which American people? Oh, you know the ones.

As with most abductions over the last few months, ICE had Okeke out of his car and into the back of a van within minutes of initiating the abduction. ICE agents have to move quickly to avoid confrontation with outraged residents who do not accept their abductions as normal and are willing to put their bodies on the line to stop them. If these ICE agents had shown even a little bit of restraint, our story would end here. No DHS statement. No national coverage. Just another day in America.

Restraint has never been ICE’s strong point, though, which is why they beat Okeke so badly that he had to go to the hospital. Now they had to wait around for discharge. Three thugs in ill-fitting armor, hanging out at Wykoff Hospital; sore-thumb visible as the sun went down.

Word of ICE’s presence spread quickly through group chats. All across the city, hundreds of residents dropped their Saturday night plans and travelled to Wykoff Hospital to do what they could to thwart the abduction.

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Al (not her real name) was among the first to arrive on scene. An agent inside one of the unmarked ICE vehicles idling outside the hospital preemptively pepper sprayed the first person in her group as they sprinted around the building towards his SUV, which made it clear they were in the right place. “People were moving stuff in front of the vehicles and standing in front of the vehicles,” Al said. “We didn’t want to let the agents leave with someone.”

As Brooklyn residents poured onto the scene, an undercover police car drove by with lights flashing. “They rolled down the windows and it turned out they were NPYD.” New York is a sanctuary city, which means the cops legally cannot help ICE. “We were like, we don’t care about what you’re doing. So we let them go.”

A second unmarked car with flashing lights drove past a few minutes later. This one contained an agent, and so residents moved to block that car as well. The agent kept driving. “He was going pretty slow, so people were slow walking and pushing back on the vehicle,” Al says. “A lot of the people who were on the scene at that point kind of got pulled with that car.” Al remained behind to block the initial vehicle, which saw its chance to escape and also began to drive slowly away. That original group continued doing what they could to block the van’s departure as they moved with the vehicle down the street.

Al remembers looking behind her and seeing a swarm of New York police officers descend upon the protesters surrounding the second vehicle just down the street. They began to violently clear a path for Trump's secret police. She turned her attention back to the moving SUV in front of her. Minutes later, that swarm reached her.

“Suddenly I hear more noise really close behind me,” she said. “There were like 10-20 NYPD officers right behind us with that first van. They were ripping people off of the cars, just grabbing people by the shoulders, by backpacks, by whatever they could, and just throwing people into other cars, into the street. I remember being grabbed from behind and thrown down in between some cars.”

Al picked herself up and got back in front of the vehicle. Once again, the police grabbed her. This time, they didn’t let go.

“I just remember my glasses got thrown off and they did something to my face. I have a bunch of bruising on my cheek and forehead, and my face is all scraped up, but I don’t fully remember what happened. Somebody had to tell me in jail that there was something on my forehead.” Al said. The NYPD would arrest eight other people before the night was over.

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To hear the DHS tell it, the biggest problem their patriotic agents face on the mean streets of your average American city isn’t massive popular resistance, but the unspeakable barbarism of sanctuary laws. This obsession seems odd, since sanctuary city laws haven’t exactly thwarted their efforts thus far. Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis are all sanctuary cities, and yet these cities deployed no on-the-ground protection for their residents as ICE disappeared tens of thousands of them in broad daylight. Only civilian action has meaningfully thwarted these kidnappings so far.

And yet, the DHS is correct to fear sanctuary laws. They might not stop ICE abductions, but they do stop abductions from becoming normal. Real hard to argue you're a federal police agency when local police can’t work with you. Hard to argue that only Soros-funded radical blue-haired lunatics object to their remigration project when city governments are telling their people that ICE agents are lawbreakers, not law enforcers: an outside paramilitary menace whose violence should be resisted.

Sanctuary laws broadly reflect the will of the American people, in and out of the cities they target. Sixty percent of Americans disapprove of ICE’s current mission. Only 39 percent are certain the agency should exist at all; fully half of all Americans want ICE abolished entirely. Little wonder that the majority of Americans support active civilian resistance: 59 percent believe anti-ICE demonstrations are “mostly legitimate protests.”

These numbers are very similar to anti-cop sentiment at the height of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests—with one important exception. Approximately two-thirds of Americans believed that cops treat Black people less fairly than white people and that civilians should be able to sue police officers for excessive force. Even larger majorities favored police reform measures like civilian oversight boards and abolishing chokeholds.

And yet, despite this near-univeral outrage, 73 percent of respondents wanted police budgets to either stay the same or increase. The VAST majority of Americans opposed defunding the police, and outright abolition was as fringe as it gets. BLM succeeded in raising awareness and stoking justified outrage, but never managed to shake the public perception that the police are normal. Their violence is unfortunate, perhaps there should be reform, but cops do a lot of good and we should keep them around….right?

All ICE has to do to become normal is convince the public that their violence is equivalent to police violence. They don’t have to become more popular. They don’t need widespread public buy-in. They need people to say things like “well yes, they go too far, but obviously we need ICE to protect us from violent illegal aliens. The answer is body cameras, anti-mask laws, and all the other things the Democrats proposed when they shut down the federal government over ICE funding.”

Once ICE becomes a necessary evil in the public’s eyes, residents like Al and others who actively resist their activities become pro-crime agitators. Dems distance themselves from ICE resistance for all the reasons they’ve distanced themselves from BLM. Thinkpieces in major media outlets start talking about how whistles disrupt the peace, blocking traffic endangers neighborhoods, and filming is basically doxxing. All these things become The Wrong Way To Fight This.

ICE agents are worse than cops, who are plenty bad already. Letting the NYPD through was absolutely the right call, and it’s the call most residents are making across the country. To protect our friends and neighbors, the public must continue to see ICE and the cops as distinct, separate agencies.

Unfortunately, a lot of cops don’t see things that way.

By the time the NYPD arrested Al, hundreds of residents stood outside Wykoff hospital. Many of them documented clear, direct cooperation between ICE and the cops throughout the night. This video compilation, which comes to us courtesy of Freedom News TV, shows New York’s finest talking to ICE, shutting car doors for ICE, and physically assaulting residents so ICE could get away, all in direct defiance of New York City law.

Police cooperation with ICE in defiance of city governments doesn’t just undermine sanctuary city laws; it boosts ICE’s credibility as a law enforcement agency. When ICE agents and the NYPD stand side by side, target the same people, and crack the same heads, ICE violence becomes police violence. ICE targets become dangerous criminals. And civilian opposition becomes pro-crime agitation.

When the residents on scene confronted the NYPD about their direct violation of New York City law, a police captain named James G Wilson was kind enough to respond honestly:

Wilson: [Mamdani] is temporary. He’s expendable. Who’s Mamdani? He’s nonsense.

Protester: He’s your boss.

Wilson: Not my boss. He’s total nonsense. He’s an embarrassment and total nonsense. Not my mayor. All Democrats, no: waste of human race.

James G Wilson is not some random beat cop. He was the executive officer for the 94th precinct, which covers the neighborhood of Greenpoint in Brooklyn. Greenpoint residents elected Mamdani by a 50-point margin, which means that Wilson apparently believes most of the people he allegedly protects and serves are a “waste of human race.”

Wilson has not been fired for insubordination, or placed on administrative leave, or punished in any financial way—it would be highly abnormal if he were. Instead, the NYPD has transferred him to the communications division, where he continues to draw his six-figure salary.

One might expect Mayor Zohran Mamdani to be upset about a police officer defying city law and calling him expendable. Instead, Mamdani distanced himself even from the decision to transfer Wilson. He also denied that the NYPD violated sanctuary laws that night. “I want to be very clear that there was no prior coordination or planning between the NYPD and ICE ahead of this incident,” he stated at a press conference three days later. “NYPD officers were not dispatched to the hospital to participate or facilitate an ICE operation. Rather, they were responding to 911 calls regarding a protest outside of the hospital.”

It is illegal to block traffic, as hundreds of Brooklynites did that night. It is also illegal—unconstitutional, even—to abduct people, deny them due process, and imprison them in concentration camps (and there is truly no other term to describe the places they end up). Laws are words written on paper, nothing more; they only work when a critical mass of people decide to follow them. On paper, jaywalking is illegal. In practice, everyone jaywalks and the cops don’t care unless they’re trying to get you for something else. The actual rules that govern us aren’t determined by what’s legal. They’re determined by what’s normal. Blocking traffic to thwart an ICE abduction is a profoundly, unequivocally moral action. No law on earth can change that fact.

The NYPD could treat active resistance to ICE like jaywalking, and we should be outraged when they don’t. “I feel like people in New York have gotten so used to NYPD’s violence that it almost feels natural, or explainable, or excusable,” Al said. “They could literally do nothing. Ideally they’re being more supportive of responders and actual New Yorkers and community members who are concerned about what is happening to our neighbors. But they could literally just do nothing.”

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May 2nd was not the first time the NYPD has helped ICE get away from rapid responders. “We saw this in February when ICE moved from Bushwick to Clinton Hill. We saw this at Canal street,” E, a Brooklyn resident active in rapid response, told me. “I think that what we saw on Saturday and the direct collab between NYPD and ICE leaves a lot of questions for our elected officials to think about.”

Mamdani has good reason to tread lightly when it comes to the police. James G Wilson’s claim that his mayor is “expendable” wasn’t just some random asshole mouthing off, but an accurate description of how cops deal with elected officials who make them angry. Law enforcement officers often respond to laws they don’t like by quiet quitting, then arguing the reforms they hate have hobbled law enforcement and empowered criminals. Police unions are big spenders in local elections, and can make or break reelection campaigns. When all else fails, they mount vicious harassment campaigns against politicians and district attorneys that defy them.

Mayors and city councils across the country have tried to reform the police forces allegedly under their control. A recent academic article suggests the issue may be our insistance on pretending the cops operate like cops. “American police forces undermine local democracy by encroaching upon the decision-making powers of city officials in ways that resemble militaries in fragile democracies.”

Here’s the thing about association: it goes both ways.

We accept cop violence as normal thanks to a collective fiction in which police forces enforce the law at the behest of our government. This is fundamentally untrue. The Supreme Court has ruled that police are under no obligation to protect and serve the people. Some people join the police force out of an honest desire to protect and serve anyway, and some even manage it against all odds. But entrenched cop culture actively corrodes everyone inside it. We are seeing the fruits of that corrosion on our streets.

If these institutions continue to openly align themselves with ICE in defiance of our elected officials, people may start to see them as a corrupt paramilitary force that feels entitled to flout the law. In this scenario, ICE doesn’t become law enforcement in the eyes of the public. Law enforcement becomes ICE. Something that ought to be abolished, so we can build something that actually protects and serves the people.

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Video of NYPD helping ICE: https://www.youtube.com/@FREEDOMNEWSTV/videos

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Can we talk about praise music real quick?

I am told that God created the heavens and the earth. He created the birds in the air and the fishes in the sea. The piranha. The Great White Shark. Those freaky angler fish guys. God created the platypus and the capybara. Ever see a giant redwood? God's work also.

And you're telling me that God—that awesome, cre…

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Donald Trump is a loser—not in a playground-insult sense, but a definitional one. Trump is a thing that loses; it is his function and his purpose. He is a finely-tuned machine that turns victory into defeat. He is enshittification made flesh.

For 79 long years this virtuoso has honed his craft, and we are blessed to witness his magnum opus. His unprecedented fecal achievement makes Trump Steaks look like a culinary success, Trump! The Game like a cherished family pasttime, and his Atlantic City casino bankruptcies worthy of the Nobel Prize in Economics. Only a few in history have ever matched it.

America isn’t just losing the Iran war in a conventional sense, we’re losing it fractally. A fractal looks the same no matter how far you zoom in or out, and so does this war. From every angle and on every level, the Iran War is an unmitigated, world-bending catastrophe, each aspect somehow stupider than the last.

Let us zoom in on an obscure little branch of this Mandelbrot Disaster. Let us talk about Oman.

Eye of the Storm

Last year, Rest of World tapped me to write about Oman’s space program. I will not bullshit you, dear reader: before this assignment and the three weeks I spent there, I was almost completely unaware of this country’s existence. So were most of the people I know.

Oman, as it turns out, is a country on the Arabian peninsula that sits south of Saudi Arabia and east of Yemen. You won’t find any ski slopes in their deserts, no man-made island resorts off their coasts. Structures like Burj Khalifa aren’t just absent, they’re anathema: the Sultan has forbidden all skyscrapers in favor of traditional architecture. It’s a quietly ambitious nation, with a fierce pride that neither seeks nor requires outside affirmation.

This nation’s geopolitical strategy is as ambitious as it gets for a country in the heart of the Middle East: authentic neutrality. Somehow, they have pulled this off. The country’s majority Ibadi Muslim sect, which sits outside the Sunni/Shia conflict and values both tolerance and hospitality, helps explain their success. Since the strategy’s inauguration in the early 70s, Oman has worked hard to be a friend to all and an enemy to none. The Switzerland of the Middle East, some call them. An oasis of peace in a war-torn region.

Oman uses their unique position to help forge connection and host peace negotiations within the region. They’ve facilitated dialogue between the Saudis and the Houthis, mediated talks between Iran and Iraq. They worked behind the scenes for decades to establish peace between Israel and other Middle Eastern nations. And, most importantly for our story today, they have long served as neutral ground for negotiations between Iran and the USA.

The country gets results. When American backpackers inadvertently wandered into Iranian territory during a trip through Iraq, Oman helped negotiate to get those hikers home. The country has faciliated prisoner swaps between the two nations. Most crucially, Oman mediated Obama’s 2015 nuclear treaty, in which Iran agreed to dial back their nuclear program and the US agreed to lift sanctions (which brought Iranian uranium enrichment to zero before Trump torpedoed it and reinstated sanctions in 2018).

You may have noticed that the United States is not currently negotiating with Iran in Oman. JD Vance is instead flying back and forth to Pakistan: a notably unstable nation with a long history of sponsoring our enemies and the perennial silver medalist of the yearly “Nuclear Power That Shouldn’t Be One” competition, right behind North Korea. This year, they’re going to have to settle for bronze. America has silver pretty much sewn up and may be going for the gold before the year is out.

America is currently testing Pakistan’s patience instead of Oman’s because, for Trump, a country without enemies apparently reads as a challenge. Our president is working hard to alienate a country whose geopolitical and economic importance has never been greater…and Iran is doing its best to take advantage.

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The Art Of The Heel

It is spring of 2025. Trump is ratcheting up his anti-Iranian rhetoric. Also, though, he wants that sexy Nobel Peace Prize, so he sends Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Oman to broker a deal. The American and Iranian delegations refused to meet directly, so Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Al-Busaidi, served as both mediator and go-between. Four times, negotiations stalled; four times, Al-Busaidi got them back on track.

And then, on June 13th, Israel launched an attack on Iran. Eight days later, Trump joined in with Operation Midnight Hammer and “totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. Negotiations were over. The delegates went home.

It is February of 2026. Trump and Netanyahu are once again ramping up rhetoric against Iran, which apparently managed to totally rebuild their totally obliterated nuclear program in a matter of months—very impressive. Once again, American and Iranian delegations arrive in Oman to attempt a nuclear deal.

On February 27th, Al-Busaidi announced that a nuclear deal was within reach. Not only had Iran agreed to cease stockpiling weapons-grade uranium, he said, they agreed to degrade all current uranium stockpiles and allow IAEA inspectors to certify compliance. “This is something that is not in the old deal that was negotiated during President Obama's time. This is something completely new,” Al-Busaidi said: an obvious yet skilled attempt to stroke Trump’s ego. “If you cannot stockpile material that is enriched, then there is no way you can actually create a bomb.” Details would take time, the foreign minister said, but “the big main issues, components that really are the main areas of concern, I think that can be agreed tomorrow.”

Hours after Al-Busaidi’s statement, the bombs started falling. “We sought repeatedly to make a deal. We tried,” Trump declared in a pre-recorded statement on Truth Social. “But Iran refused, just as it has for decades and decades.”

“I am dismayed,” Al-Busaidi tweeted in the early hours of what America promised would be a lightning-fast war, over before you know it, definitely not a quagmire. “Neither the interests of the United States nor the cause of global peace are well served by this. And I pray for the innocents who will suffer.” The foreign minister would spend the next two weeks repeatedly trying to get the United States back to the negotiating table. The Trump administration rebuffed every attempt.

Finally, on March 18th, Al-Busaidi publicly broke his silence in an op/ed for The Economist. “The question for friends of America is simple. What can we do to extricate the superpower from this unwanted entanglement?” he wrote. “America’s friends have a responsibility to tell the truth.”

Al-Busaidi told the truth as he sees it. America and Israel’s attack, he wrote, was “a shock but not a surprise.” Iran’s retaliatory strikes against allegedly American targets in neighboring states, while “deeply regrettable and completely unacceptable,” were also “probably the only rational option available to Iranian leadership.”

Like many analysts, Al-Busaidi believes America allowed Israel to drag it into this war against its own national interest. These two countries’ objectives, he argues, are incompatible. Israel “explicitly seeks the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and probably cares little about how the country is governed, or by whom, once this has been achieved.” Only a protracted campaign with American boots on the ground could possibly make that happen. (I wrote something similar a few weeks ago).

America, on the other hand, wants “a decisive end to nuclear weapons proliferation in the region, secure energy supply chains and renewed investment opportunities.” Al-Busaidi and Oman also want these things. Only peace in Iran and a return to bilateral negotiations can make those things happen. “It will certainly be difficult for the Iranian leadership to return to dialogue with an administration that twice switched abruptly from talks to bombing and assassination,” Al-Busaidi acknowledged, but he saw no other way.

Trump, to my knowledge, never responded to any of these points. Why would he? America was winning, is winning, and presumably will stay winning for however many years this farce drags on. You can tell that we are winning by the press conferences we keep having to explain how hard we’re winning—you know, the way a winning person might.

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Dire Straits

Here are the most geopolitically important 1.5 paragraphs in Al-Busaidi’s measured yet impassioned plea for peace:

The effects of this retaliation are felt most acutely on the southern side of the Gulf, where Arab countries that had placed their trust in American security co-operation now experience that co-operation as an acute vulnerability, threatening their present security and future prosperity.

For Gulf states an economic model in which global sport, tourism, aviation and technology were to play an important role is now endangered. Plans to become a global hub for data centres may need to be revised.

Oman has the smallest oil reserves of any gulf nation. Their wells are expected to run dry around 2040, which means the country has just 14 years left to transition from a petrostate into literally anything else. To accomplish this, Oman has bet big on agriculture, ports, and the tech industry. Agriculture requires fertilizer, which requires oil. Tech companies want geopolitical stability. And ports? Ports…are complicated.

Oman has three deep-water ports that sit just outside the Strait of Hormuz. These ports are connected to modern and well-maintained roads that allow for land transport of oil. Gulf states and ships alike are beginning to use these ports to circumvent the strait. From a purely economic standpoint, this development is fantastic for Oman.

Given time for supply chains to adjust, these Omani ports could make Iran’s blockade less effective long-term, which may explain why, in the first days of this war, Iran bombed all three ports. That was not so great for Oman and, while Iran later apologized, the unspoken threat of further strikes remains.

Speaking of blockades: Iran only controls one side of that strait they’re blockading. Guess who sits on the other side?

At first glance, it looks like the UAE controls the strait, but look again. The tip of that peninsula jutting into the strait is an Omani enclave. Keep in mind that national waters extend 12 miles from a nation’s coastline, and that the Strait of Hormuz is just 30 miles across at its narrowest point.

For Iran, Oman is a lot more than a convenient place to host discussions. This is a country that can make or break their plans. Oman lays claim to half of that strait they’re blockading and offers the most convenient alternate ports. Neutrality just won’t cut it anymore. Only a partnership will do.

On April 6th, Iran released a 10-point plan for peace through intermediaries in Pakistan. This plan contained the now-infamous “toll both” proposal in which Iran would, in perpetuity, collect about $2 million from each ship that traverses the strait. That revenue, Iran claimed, would be split evenly with Oman.

Two days later, Oman announced it had no intention of collecting any tolls, which would violate both Omani trade agreements and the Law of the Sea. The agreement would also have meant the end of Oman’s geopolitical neutrality and the beginning of a rogue state era.

Oman is in a precarious position. Any partnership with Iran opens the door to American military action, while remaining neutral and keeping their ports open invites Iranian military action.

One more time with feeling, Mr. Al-Busaidi:

Arab countries that had placed their trust in American security co-operation now experience that co-operation as an acute vulnerability, threatening their present security and future prosperity.

Last Sunday, Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araqchi traveled to Oman’s capital to meet with both Al-Busaidi and the Sultan himself. “The Foreign Minister expressed appreciation for Oman’s responsible approach in facilitating diplomatic processes,” Iran’s ministry of foreign affairs stated in a press release. “He further emphasized Iran’s determination to safeguard friendly relations with Oman and other countries in the southern Persian Gulf region.” According to Axios, however, their talk centered largely around the Strait of Hormuz itself. PBS reports that Iran once again tried convince Oman to go halfsies on that toll.

I didn’t have a great time in Oman. If I could do that trip over again I think would do better, but I failed to gain the access my editors and I wanted. The authorities who run the space program were very concerned about a hit piece, and the possibility of positive coverage seemed to mean very little to them. Oman’s culture is friendly, sure, but they are looking out for number one just as ruthlessly as any other country. Neutrality has paid dividends for them so far, and they’ve taken full advantage of the resulting peace to build infrastructure and modernize the nation. What happens if American friendship solidifies into a liability with no upsides? If Trump continues to snub their leadership and Iran continues to court it?

I’m not saying Oman changes their position tomorrow, or next year, or ever—navigating impossible situations is their specialty, after all. What I am saying is that Trump is a loser. He’s losing this war. He’s losing the global economy. And if Oman manages to maintain its neutrality, it will be despite Trump’s best efforts to lose that too.

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Here’s the map referenced in the recording:

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Here’s what I went with:

If you too are curious about What Is To Be Done: How To Take Action in Horrifying Times, you can get my take on the answer with the recorded version of that lecture, which includes a hefty Q&A at the e…

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The earth is full of light, which means the stars are hard to see. I’ve only truly witnessed them in two places: Khost, Afghanistan and Stanley, Idaho. You see why the ancients named it the Milky Way when it’s blackout dark like that. A band of light, and each light is a star, a…

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Part 1

Yesterday, we talked about the Very Clear Objectives Trump and friends have laid out for our “excursion” to Iran. With that fiction out of the way, let’s talk about the actual reasons we’ve decided to start the world’s stupidest war. They are, I’m afraid, very stupid, very misguided, and/or very downright evil. Like, cartoonishly so.

Let’s get into it:

1.…

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Say what you want about our objectives in Iran, at least they’re clear. “Crystal clear,” according to Admiral Brad Cooper. Everybody says so, and they say it all the time. “I don’t understand what the confusion is,” Marco Rubio told the press peevishly three days into the war. “Let me explain it to you, and I’ll do it once again as clearly as possible.”

I am but a simple radical left-wing fake-news liberal commie lunatic with TDS in my DNA, and so I am struggling to wrap my pronoun-addled brain around these crystal-clear objectives. To overcome this handicap, I’ve listened to some speeches and I’ve made a little chart:

I don’t personally think I should have to listen to 14 speeches to figure out what our objectives are, but maybe that’s the TDS talking. Either way, taken in aggregate, there actually is some clarity here.

1. Everyone pretty much agrees on two crystal-clear objectives: eliminate ballistic missile capacity and destroy Iran’s navy (though whether or not Iran’s navy has been destroyed is apparently up for debate and also it has not been destroyed).

2. Iran’s nuclear weapons come in third, though you’ll notice that General Caine avoids mentioning this objective entirely.

3. At first, Hegseth, Caine and Trump wanted to destroy Iran’s ability to field a military. Sometime in the middle of Week 2, this goal expanded to the destruction of Iran’s entire military complex—not just their armed services, but their ability to manufacture anything useful to the military.

4. No one mentioned Iran’s drone manufacturing facilities until five days in, which should disturb everyone, since Iranian drones have transformed the nature of warfare over the last few years.

5. Hegseth and Leavitt were excited about controlling Iran’s airspace, even if they couldn’t agree with each other (or themselves) on whether they’d accomplished it or not.

6. Caine, Rubio and Leavitt want to eliminate Iran’s ability to fund and arm proxy forces. Considering all the sturm und drang we’ve heard about Iran’s 47-year war on America, you’d think this would rank higher.

7. The administration barely mentioned preemptive strikes, which is fascinating, since Trump’s entire constitutional case for this “excursion” rests on that argument, but also makes complete sense, since nobody cares and they can do whatever they want. No one’s bothered to mention preemptive strikes since Day 11.

8. Regime change? Yes but no but also yes. Choose your own adventure.

9. Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio have both explicitly claimed that Iran is hell-bent on destroying the United States for religious reasons. We’ll talk more about this later.

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We have three core objectives—missiles, the navy, and nukes—and a constellation of other goals that vary day-to-day. But the problem with these objectives isn’t just that they’re scattershot and shifting. It’s that objectives are supposed to be, you know, objective. Measurable. Defined. But every time some Fake News Media subversive asks the administration malicious, unpatriotic questions like “How close are we to achieving those objectives?” and “If we’ve really destroyed the Iranian navy, does that mean the troops can come home?”…well, that’s when we get our real answer:

We will finish this on America-first conditions of President Trump’s choosing, nobody else’s, as it should be.”

-Hegseth, March 2

“The President always has the options to undertake whatever operations he decides to do as the Commander-in-Chief.”

-Rubio, March 2

“When [the President], as commander in chief of the US Armed Forces, determines that Iran no longer poses a threat to the United States of America and the goals of Operation Epic Fury has been fully realized, then Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional surrender whether they say it themselves or not.”

-Leavitt, March 6th

“[Trump] gets to control the throttle. He’s the one deciding; he’s the one elected on behalf of the American people when we’re achieving those particular objectives. And so it’s not for me to posit whether it’s the beginning, the middle, or the end; that’s his, and he’ll continue to communicate that.”

-Hegseth, March 10th

“And we’ve got internal metrics that look at that that we represent to the president, who then can decide, how long he’d like to continue in pursuit of those military objectives.”

-Hegseth, March 13th

Brian Kilmeade: When are you going to know when [the war] is over?
Trump: When I feel it-
Kilmeade: Okay.
Trump: -- I feel it in my bones.

-Fox News, March 13th

According to the administration itself, there is only one objective: attack Iran until Trump feels like the war is over. Vibes and feelings; thoughts and prayers. If Trump says Iran’s ballistic missile capacity is destroyed, it’s destroyed. If he says it isn’t, it isn’t. Facts don’t matter. Reality doesn’t matter. We are at war because Trump wants to be at war; we’ll stop being at war when he decides he wants to stop—or at least, that’s what he’d like us to think.

Certainly the media is covering this war as if Trump’s whims are the only ones that matter. When our president declared on Truth Social that he was “consider[ing] winding down our great Military efforts” on the afternoon of March 20th, outlets like Axios, The Hill, and the New York Times dutifully reported the development as if it were actual news, though they did also point out that signs were inconsistent. Hours earlier, CBS broke a story about the DOD’s detailed plans for a ground invasion. This story got a lot less coverage, despite claiming multiple internal sources that weren’t, you know, a Truth Social post from one of the world’s most manic posters.

Here’s the thing: I don’t buy it. Trump’s whims matter, sure, but is he steering the ship by himself? I don’t think so.

Donald Trump has always rambled. He’s always indulged in weird asides. But he’s never been this incoherent. He regularly repeats himself now. He’s developed a new bilateral lisp. He’s started to say things like “it can only good happen.” The man’s brain is melting before our eyes. I highly doubt he’s making decisions unabetted.

So, um…why would they lie about this? You’d expect the lie to go in the opposite direction—a comforting fiction about rationality and pluralism and democracy working as intended. The obvious explanation is that praising Trump’s unilateral and perfect decision-making is an essential job requirement for cabinet members. These clowns can do whatever they want, damn near—FBI security and private jet rides for your F-list country girlfriend? Signal chats full of sensitive information and an Atlantic journalist? Blatantly profiteer from the position?—but God help them if they don’t thank Trump every other word when they speak to the public or, heaven forbid, steal the spotlight. Trump has fired exactly one cabinet member so far, and her dealbreaking crime was a $220M ad campaign with her pornogrified face plastered all over it.

There’s a deeper reason, though. One of the only power players in this administration with any kind of coherent vision beyond self-enrichment and masturbatory cruelty is the Heritage Foundation, and one of the Heritage Foundation’s pet goals is the expansion of presidential power. You may have noticed that everything the Trump administration says and does seeks to stretch executive power a bit further, even if there are other, more subtle ways to get what they want. They flout judicial rulings and sideline Congress at every opportunity, not in secret but openly and proudly.

The Heritage goons aren’t just trying to alter the structure of our government, though they are absolutely doing that as well. They would like us, as a nation, to grow accustomed to being controlled by the whims and desires of one man, rather than by representatives we can yell at over the phone and pressure in the primaries. Easier to shove your agenda through that way, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to rig one big election than hundreds of smaller ones.

So What’s Really Going On?

It’s becoming increasingly clear that Trump’s Iranian “excursion” seems contradictory and incoherent because it is both contradictory and incoherent. Four factions want this war, with overlapping yet ultimately incompatible goals that range from merely bad to genuinely psychotic.

Tomorrow morning, we’ll explore exactly what those are.

If you’re a premium subscriber and would rather not wait until tomorrow morning, however, great news: you can access Part 2 right here, or you can listen to the audio version of this article, which contains both parts.

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