Featured

Trump: Iran asked me to be Supreme Leader, but I said no thanks

Trump’s “Iran asked me to be Supreme Leader” joke at an NRCC fundraiser uses a real, deadly leadership crisis in Iran to normalize assassination-as-policy and blur what’s confirmed about the war and succession.

Mar 26, 2026

Featured

‘Men need to be perp-walked’ after Epstein files release, Massie tells BBC

A GOP lawmaker says the Epstein document releases are still falling short—because redactions and withheld material may be blocking accountability and survivor-centered justice.

Mar 25, 2026

Buried.News

The stories buried under the noise

Primary focus

Trump fires Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary

A Cabinet secretary was forced out amid contracting and oversight scrutiny, signaling that executive control—not transparent accountability—can dictate leadership of the agency driving mass detention and deportation.

Mar 5, 2026

Featured

The Trump gold coin is not normal : Consider This from NPR

A federal design panel OK’d a Trump portrait for a commemorative gold coin, but the key question is whether Treasury can legally bypass long-standing limits meant to keep living politicians off U.S. money.

Mar 23, 2026

Featured

White House Confronted Over Huge Bets Made Minutes Before Trump’s Big War Move

A $580 million burst of oil-futures selling minutes before Trump’s Iran “talks” post raises a basic public-interest question: did anyone trade on advance knowledge of a market-moving national security decision?

Mar 24, 2026

Norms Impact

Congress Is Considering Abolishing Your Right to Be Anonymous Online

Congress is advancing “child safety” bills that functionally end anonymous speech by mandating identity-linked access and empowering state officials to censor lawful content as “harmful.”

Congress

Mar 5, 2026

Sources

https://theintercept.com/2026/03/05/kosa-online-age-verification-free-speech-privacy

Summary

A bipartisan package of roughly a dozen “child online safety” bills, including the Kids Online Safety Act, is moving forward in the House and would drive platforms toward identity- and age-verification systems that tie offline identity to online use. That shift would recast online access from a rights-protecting default into a permissioned system enforced through surveillance-ready data collection and state-level censorship authority. The practical consequence is a durable infrastructure for unmasking speakers, expanding subpoenas and data pipelines, and chilling lawful speech and organizing—especially for vulnerable communities and dissenters.

Reality Check

Normalizing identity-linked access to basic online speech builds a standing apparatus for surveillance and retaliation against lawful dissent. Once government policy pressures platforms and app stores to permanently bind real names to browsing and speech, subpoenas and censorship powers become routine tools of governance rather than exceptional measures. Empowering state attorneys general to police “harmful” content lowers the barrier to viewpoint suppression and turns private intermediaries into enforcement arms. Over time, our free-speech and due-process guardrails weaken as anonymity—an essential protection for whistleblowers, journalists, and vulnerable communities—becomes a revocable privilege.

Media

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Detail

In August 2024, the Biden administration hosted a Creator Economy Conference at the White House where senior adviser Neera Tanden criticized online anonymity and participants promoted regulation to force real-name use on social media, pointing to proposals such as the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA).

A bipartisan package of about a dozen “child online safety” bills is advancing in the House of Representatives. The measures are described as requiring social media companies to implement age-verification systems to restrict minors’ access.

The context describes age verification as requiring collection of identifying information, such as government documents, payment data, or other identity-disclosing data, whether held by platforms or vendors. It also notes increased federal subpoenas seeking to identify anonymously run anti-ICE accounts.

KOSA is described as empowering state attorneys general to restrict content deemed “harmful to minors,” with groups like the Heritage Foundation stating plans to use it to target LGBTQ+ and abortion content. Lawmakers and committees are also amplifying proposals to shift verification to app stores or operating systems, including a law signed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom requiring ID verification for operating systems.

Norms Impact

The GOP’s top think tank just defended an open Nazi

Heritage’s leader normalized a Hitler-praising antisemite as a “friend on the right,” collapsing the movement’s gatekeeping norm that extremist hate disqualifies access to power.

General

Oct 31, 2025

Sources

https://www.vox.com/politics/466905/the-gops-top-think-tank-just-defended-an-open-nazi

Summary

Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts released a video arguing against ostracizing podcaster Nick Fuentes, who has praised Adolf Hitler and called for lethal punishment of “perfidious Jews” after “we take power.” The intervention signals an institutional shift inside a major Trump-aligned policy organization toward treating overt antisemitism as debatable coalition speech rather than disqualifying extremism. The practical consequence is a lowered gatekeeping standard that increases the likelihood extremist actors gain access to mainstream conservative influence networks and staffing pipelines.

Reality Check

This conduct normalizes eliminationist rhetoric as coalition politics, training institutions to protect extremists for “unity” and leaving our rights defenseless when violence-inciting ideology becomes organizationally sheltered. It is not, on these facts alone, likely criminal: defending or platforming a speaker is generally protected, and the text does not show an agreement, solicitation, or material support that would trigger statutes like 18 U.S.C. § 373 (solicitation) or 18 U.S.C. § 2339A/§ 2339B (material support). The core violation is governance, not speech—an elite policy institution is using its authority to launder a self-declared antisemite into legitimacy, weakening the democratic norm that power brokers must exclude advocates of political violence and group punishment.

Detail

On Thursday night, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts released a video addressing backlash to Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with podcaster Nick Fuentes. Fuentes has publicly described Adolf Hitler as “really fucking cool” and said “perfidious Jews” must “be given the death penalty” after “we take power.”

In the video, Roberts said he “disagree[s] with, and even abhor[s], things that Nick Fuentes says,” but argued that “canceling him is not the answer,” adding that “the American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right.” Roberts framed his message as a defense of Carlson against critics, stating Heritage would “always defend our friends,” and naming Carlson as “a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.”

Roberts’ remarks followed criticism of Carlson by figures including Sen. Ted Cruz and National Review. Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized Heritage’s stance, accusing it of “carry[ing] water for antisemites.”