Humor

I have an apology to make, and I want to make it properly this time. I doubted the children’s investment accounts. I said they were a gimmick. I said the whole thing was a branding exercise with a stock chart attached. I was wrong, and I want to say so before anyone else does. Because the facts, as the administration has stated them, are remarkable. Nearly seventy million Trump Accounts have been created, more than sixty million of them by automatic enrollment, and every American child under eighteen with a valid Social Security number now has one. I apologize for the cynicism. It turns out you really can give every child in the country a financial stake in the future in a single quarter. ...

Satire. Every figure below is drawn from the proposed rule and the responses to it; the notice itself is imagined. Office of International Student Services Notice of Program Fee Dear Student, On October 8 the Department of Homeland Security published a proposed rule under Docket No. ICEB-2026-0100. The schedule of fees below takes effect sixty days after a final rule publishes. Please review it before your advising appointment. Item 1. Initial Optional Practical Training recommendation — $70,000. ...

On September 20, the Department of Homeland Security awarded a twenty-million-dollar contract to a firm called LMD Agency, Inc. for what the contract describes as a “national media campaign.” The money did not begin at Homeland Security. The White House Office of Management and Budget transferred it to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which drew it from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and the record names the purpose in full: “OBBBA commemorative events.” ...

I have an apology to make. I have been making them, in fact, for twenty months, and I have finally read the whole stack, and I want to confess what is in it. I am the man who explains. I am the friend at the dinner table who says, “Yes, but consider the context.” I am the citizen who, watching the tape, reaches for the word rhetoric the way other people reach for a chair. I have made room for this administration in more conversations than I can count, and always in the same spirit: not to defend the indefensible, but to keep a conversation going with people I love. That is the first thing to confess. The second is that I have stopped, and I want to show you why, because the record closed the case for me one apology at a time. ...

Before the Missouri Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners In the Matter of the Application of Eric Schmitt for Licensure as a United States Senator Docket No. 2026-09-30-SEN-001 HEARING OFFICER: Good morning. This is the public hearing on the application of Eric Schmitt for licensure as a United States Senator from the State of Missouri. The applicant is present. Mr. Schmitt, you have filed a sworn statement that you meet the qualifications set forth in the Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 3, Clause 3. Is that correct? ...

My name is Philip, and I have TDS. I have had it for years. I have it so badly that I read the news every morning, I check the polls, I have opinions about the federal funds rate, and I once wrote an entire essay about the legal record of the forty-seventh president. The symptoms are severe and, I am told, incurable. I am here to tell you that I do not want a cure. I am proud to have TDS, and I think you should be too. ...

A note before we begin: none of the people quoted below are real. None of this happened. It is a thought experiment, told in the style of an unhinged retrospective documentary, about a single counterfactual: what if the man who has spent forty years insisting he possesses the best brain, the best words, and the best instincts of anyone who has ever lived, actually did, all at once, with no warning, on a Tuesday? What follows is speculative fiction. Treat it accordingly, and enjoy. ...