Donald Trump’s America can’t even give us circuses anymore

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If the federal government was really concerned with crime they would deploy security to every school in the country to PROTECT our most vulnerable citizens, our children. Spend money on children instead of imaginary crime in DC and wherever else Trump wants to send his SS troops.
- Freedom First on “Even murderers don’t deserve to be misgendered”

The news, in brief …

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• “How can you be so ignorant?”: RFK Jr. called “charlatan” during bipartisan Senate grilling

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• Vance says senators are “full of s**t” after RFK Jr. hearing

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• Federal judge tears into Trump on LA — and warns the rest of us

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• Trump team offered Eric Adams job to help Andrew Cuomo stop Zohran Mamdani: report

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• Bari Weiss close to taking top role at CBS News: report

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• “I put my hope in him”: Epstein survivor who voted for Trump now fears he is “hiding” the truth

  "Who are you hiding for then? Because if it’s not you, then who is it?" Jena-Lisa Jones pleaded in an interview. Read more.

Make me smarter …

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Are we ready for some football?

If a novel set in Donald Trump’s America wrote that fans couldn’t get to the NFL’s opening day game in the city where the Constitution was drafted because of crumbling infrastructure, reviewers would call it too heavy-handed.

If they followed that by revealing that the failing public transit system was bailed out by a phone-based gambling app, David Foster Wallace would rise from the dead to write a pan in the pages of The Atlantic.

But that’s exactly what happened on Thursday night.

Like all modern conservatives, Pennsylvania’s state-level Republican lawmakers have a pathological hatred of the cities that make all of their state’s money. They’ve taken that ire to the extreme, digging in their heels over funding Philadelphia’s public transit system. The funding shortfall they created required the system (SEPTA) to drastically cut services. That service interruption was going to leave fans without the simplest way to attend the season opener between the Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles and “America’s Team,” the Dallas Cowboys.

Rather than leaving Philadelphians in the lurch, the mobile gambling app FanDuel stepped up to provide the paltry sum to restore express train services to the game and free rides immediately after. (For the record, the cost to provide transport to and from the game was a mere $80,000.)

The United States is an extremely wealthy country by just about any metric. One half of the bargain of regular gun violence, a lack of labor protections, and byzantine healthcare was having the ability to easily amuse ourselves. The ideological cranks empowered to hollow out the government entirely in Trump’s second term have given up on the bread and circuses half of the equation.

At any other time, the SEPTA story would be a scandal, a deeply embarrassing moment for the state GOP. The mask-off-ness of Trump’s second term has made it just another bit of “News of the Weird” ephemera. It’s what’s expected in a country where suffering is abundant and distractions are in short supply. The modern Republican Party can’t even ‘look at the little birdie” their own base away from Trump’s unfortunate connections to Jeffrey Epstein, why would they care about a game?

We’re sure SEPTA is happy for the quick infusion of cash to avoid the headache of a cars-only home opener. It’s unquestionably a good thing to keep people off the roads after a football game (and that goes double for Philadelphians). But we can’t help but wonder if waiting for the private sector to play Superman will become the norm as more and more Americans run up against the cruelty of a state that Republicans are more than happy to keep hollowing out.

It’s nice that Eagles fans can stumble home without endangering anyone, even if it comes from a serendipitous bit of largesse from a pocket addiction racket. As any user of apps like FanDuel can tell you, though, you won’t always pull out a last-minute win. Eventually, your luck runs out.

What do you think? Is Philadelphia ready to host multiple World Cup matches in the coming years? Will SEPTA service finally return to full strength in the Year of the FanDuel 3-Way Parlay? Sound off in the comments.

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Before you go …

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