Julia Bascom

Hey there Onion members, This is Ben Collins, CEO of America’s Finest News Source™. I am writing today, as we have arrived at a precipice in American life, to thank you. Our government is employing masked oafs to kidnap our neighbors, ziptie our children, and play Call of Duty: Burger King Edition in several American cities. The White House, otherwise occupied with taping an episode of HGTV’s “Help I Wrecked My House,” is hellbent on politically mandated starvation of the indigent. Worst of all, America’s airwaves have been taken over by dull throbbing moans only recently identified by scientists as something known as “Morgan Wallen.” In short, it is not a good time out there, and our captured media has been too scared to call that out. But, because of you, none of that is true at The Onion. For reasons we don’t like or understand, our work has become increasingly important. You and your contribution over the last year have allowed The Onion to thrive in this precarious moment — to take risks and to say sentences mere moments before those thoughts become criminalized. We need your help in the next year to bolster that fight as things get precipitously worse.

Because of your support, The Onion is now the 11th-most distributed newspaper in the United States, sandwiched between The Boston Globe and The Chicago Tribune. In the next year, our goal is to crack the top 10, and to surpass the circulation of the propaganda project of a notorious space pervert, Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post. We’re confident we can reach this goal with your help. Unlike other publications, which all appear to have a fetish for caving to an increasingly maniacal and unpopular authoritarian government, The Onion remains unafraid to print the truth, straightforwardly and without favor. Due to your patronage in the last year, we have: Published 13 newspapers since the relaunch of our print edition in September of 2024. Over the summer, by popular demand, we increased the size of the paper by half. Took out a full-page advertisement in the New York Times “calling upon lawmakers in Congress to sit back and do absolutely nothing,” then sent this op-ed to every member of the House and Senate and all 54,000 of our subscribers. Thankfully, they took our advice, and now people are starving. Drove the Onion Newsvan in front of protests and ICE detention centers, blaring headlines about ICE’s one true love: teargassing elementary schools. Released Jeffrey Epstein: Bad Pedophile in over 40 cities across North America and later on YouTube, and let independent theatres keep the ticket sales. It’s still unclear if we can write this off.

And, a year ago this week, we successfully bid on InfoWars at a bankruptcy auction, before the judgment was overturned by a judge for — and I’m paraphrasing here — being too cool. Yes, despite a legal bill that rivals the GDP of West Virginia, we are continuing work to acquire InfoWars and evolve it into an galactically sized depot of lies, scams, and miracle cures for all of the world’s awesome new and untracked illnesses. The Supreme Court — yes, this Supreme Court — denied Alex Jones’ appeal just last month, a last gasp at evading justice, and we’re hoping this clears a path to reinventing the dumbest site on the internet very soon. So ahead of this holiday season, please consider subscribing to The Onion for yourself, your friends, your parents, or your infant. People love getting something great in the mail every month amidst their requisite bills and death threats. Look, we’re an independent company, we don’t use AI to write headlines and make art, and we’re one of roughly three publications who are up for the fight. Unlike other places, The Onion is quadrupling down on being a pain in the ass, politically. Are you? If so, I hope you’ll continue to be an Onion member, get the paper, and help us deliver ulcers to those who deserve it. Thank you, and Tu Stultus Es, Ben Collins CEO | The Onion

Here's a note I sent to our members about what we did with their money, and why we expect the Onion to outgrow the Washington Post.

We keep doing weird, hard shit — taunting ICE, yelling at Congress for not taunting ICE, buying bad websites — when nobody else does.

Our members keep getting papers.

"quadrupling down on being a pain in the ass, politically"

Let's all make that a 2026 goal!

Honoring Alice Wong: Reprinting Bitch Magazine's Access Series Alice Wong, who reshaped the world of disability media, joined our ancestors on November 14, 2025. The Flytrap is proud to reprint her curated Access Series for Bitch Magazine.

In honor of @sfdirewolf.bsky.social's legacy as a disability activist and writer, today we are republishing Bitch Magazine's Access Series, which was originally curated by Alice Wong. Worker-owner and former Bitch editor-in-chief Evette Dionne updated the intro to the series here:

Congress wrote into the law that someone who overstays a visa while applying for asylum is not considered to be accruing “unlawful presence,” but it didn’t explicitly say those people couldn’t be arrested and detained — because it was presumed that they wouldn’t be. Well, Trump is doing it.

Senator whose wife was shot fears for safety after Trump sedition accusation President called behavior of Mark Kelly, whose wife Gabby Giffords survived assassination bid, ‘punishable by death’

Sen. Mark Kelly fears for safety. "It would be irresponsible for me not to consider that [Trump’s] words result in increased threats to myself, even to my staff, to my family."
“It would be a rather irresponsible thing for us not to consider this seriously.”
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

The Zohran press conference is your regular reminder that the entire administration folds like tissue paper at the slightest hint of confidence and conviction, and thus the fact that national democrats are playing a game of capitulation and weakness is exactly why they're all getting away with it

I’ve never met an autistic person whose “behaviour” wasn’t completely logical once you understood their needs, their history, and their nervous system.

We’re not confusing.

People just aren’t listening.

Today is just one long demonstration of the One Special Boy virus that has consumed our polity. Immediate presidency-ending stuff for anyone else from at least Truman to Biden. We're not even pretending to care about the law or the Constitution or any of the norms or duct tape anymore.

evil woman wants access to affordable childcare for HERSELF

I know this lady's household budget spreadsheet goes crazy. I would trust her more with the budget than your average Pete Buttigieg or whoever

‘Death remains my intimate shadow partner. It has been with me since birth, always hovering close by. I understand one day we will finally waltz together into the ether. I hope when that time comes, I die with the satisfaction of a life well-lived, unapologetic, joyful, & full of love.’
—Alice Wong

Technically, it's an aggravated felony sexual assault of a child, with harsher penalties put in place for perpetrators with younger victims.

Also, ACTUAL MEDIEVAL HISTORIAN HERE: For non-nobles, the average age of brides from the Black Death onwards was...22.2 years old.

Chuck Schumer Helps Pull Democrats Back From Brink Of Courage

Chuck Schumer Helps Pull Democrats Back From Brink Of Courage

There are two lessons from last noght, a local and a national. Nationwide, we see a mobilization of the Dem base and a rebuke of Trump’s vision. In New York—really a Dem-on-Dem race!—we see something more specific: the emergence of a new vision that contradicts the preferences of Dem leadership.

Me, in 2035, to a group of children huddled around a fire, feasting on stale Clif bars recovered from the twisted wreckage of a haunted Ralph's: "And that's when they bombed the Vatican, and shit really started to spin out of control."

Two things can be true at the same time: neither charities nor mutual aid groups have the capacity to completely replace SNAP benefits for November, *and* we should still do as much as we can to feed people and save lives.

when someone is complaining about the "far left" you can usually sub in "the boogeyman" and the argument sounds exactly as serious

No one should have to put up with this shit but in particular kids should not have to put up with this shit

Here is a very specific thing you can do right now that will meet the moment quite nicely Maybe do it five or six times, actually

"You want a movement, I hear. We all do. But the question is never “will somebody do something?” They are. We are. Our job is to notice, and to ensure that none of our flames burn out."

Also our job is to join in, where we can, how we can, with what we have.

open.substack.com/pub/thewhite...

It's awful to smash up all the windows and doors. Most construction companies would have another company come in and remove all the doors, windows, window sills, doorknobs, etc. They could preserve or sell the historical parts of the East Wind. They're just smashing it to create an old-world look.

Before last year’s election, my wife and I took our grandsons on a tour of the nation’s capital, realizing it might become quite different if Trump won. I kept thinking the symbols of democracy might turn into symbols of tyranny. We toured the White House’s East Wing. It’s being demolished now.

see also nobel peace prize obsession

so there was this brilliant black guy who was president, and he hurt trump’s feelings by not letting him build a ballroom at the white house and so now the east wing is gone

Trump Canceled 94 Million Pounds of Food Aid. Here’s What Never Arrived. ProPublica obtained records from the Department of Agriculture that detail the millions of pounds of food, down to the number of eggs, that never reached food banks because of the administration’s cut...

Records obtained by ProPublica indicate that food banks across the country were expecting more than 27 million pounds of chicken, 2 million gallons of milk, 10 million pounds of dried fruit and 60 million eggs that never arrived.

Kicking back with a few too many cold ones after a hard working class day at the war crimes factory and winding up with a war crimes tattoo

Fascism is such a fundamental attack on wonder and the human imagination and I think everyone should have the opportunity to let their imagination wonder as it wanders — doesn’t matter what you do for a living. Your mind matters! Your relationship with the universe is meaningful!

One of the terrible things about the conservative elites’ attacks on higher education is that they are giving their constituents the impression that the universe isn’t big, complicated, and fascinating — that it really does take this many people to work out how even a small fraction of it works

Los Angeles County declares state of emergency over immigration raids Los Angeles County officials voted on Tuesday to declare a state of emergency over ongoing federal immigration raids.

To be clear:

LA County has declared a state of emergency BECAUSE OF the federal government.

The Feds, LA County is (correctly) saying, have CAUSED the emergency.

This is a striking political moment of internal collapse. Local govts feeling compelled to protect their ppl from … their own govt.