The Mom Brief

Remember when political parties actually stood for different things? When “Republican” and “Democrat” meant something beyond which color tie someone wears while disappointing you?

Those days are dead. Murdered. Buried in a shallow grave marked “Thoughts and Prayers.”

Here’s what we’ve got instead:

Republicans roll up promising “parental rights” and “fiscal responsibility” while schools can’t afford tissues. They’re out here defending ...

West Virginia’s Hope Scholarship program, celebrated as the nation’s first “universal” education voucher system, was not a grassroots West Virginia innovation. It was the product of a sophisticated national dark money network connecting the Koch family foundations, ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), and donor anonymity organizations like DonorsTrust—a coordinated infrastructure that funnels millions through untraceable c...

I know you don't have time for this. You're working full-time, shuttling kids to activities, doing homework help at 9 PM, and trying to figure out what the hell a "Hope Scholarship" even is because your neighbor mentioned it at the bus stop and you nodded like you knew.

I get it. I'm doing it too.

I'm a single-parent with two kids in West Virginia public schools. I work full-time. I have a college degree in public policy analysis and...

State-level politics often fly under the national radar, yet this is where many of the decisions most directly affecting citizens’ daily lives are made—from education funding to environmental regulations to voting laws. It’s also where outside money can have an outsized influence, particularly in smaller states where campaign dollars go further. West Virginia, with its unique political landscape and resource-based economy, provides...

Alright people, gather 'round the digital water cooler here in West Virginia. Let's talk about something that’s got my goat more than usual this week, and that’s saying something. We’re always hollering about government waste, and rightly so. But there’s a sneaky little drain on our wallets that most people don’t even think twice about: primary elections.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Elections are the bedrock of our democracy, ...

Alright, buckle up, buttercups. It's time for a story that makes even my jaded political heart clench a little. We're going back to the prehistoric era of 2008. I was pregnant, hormones were raging like a California wildfire in August, and the internet was still a Wild West of misinformation.

And into this glorious mess waltzed Jenny McCarthy and her damn book, Belly Laughs.

Now, before you come at me with pitchforks, yes, I know. Je...

My journey into decoding political nonsense has, once again, led me down a rabbit hole I didn't ask for. It started, as these things often do, with a simple research prompt from a friend about a group called the Informed Consent Action Network, or ICAN. My first thought was, "ICAN? Sounds like a super wholesome group that probably knits sweaters for puppies." Boy, was I wrong. Dead wrong.

Instead of hand-knit sweaters, what I found ...

The Political Theater Nobody Asked For

Picture this: A political drama where the villain isn't who you'd expect, and the hero emerges from nowhere wielding... campaign finance reports? Welcome to West Virginia's SD-15, where a Senate President just learned that in American politics, no good deed goes unpunished—especially when pharmaceutical interests enter the chat.

The Stand for Us PAC just dropped $400,000 to defeat Craig Blair, a...

This article is a response to the statement “West Virginia Public Broadcasting has not been able to trace the expenditures or original donors to this PAC.” From WV Public Broadcasting article “Dark Money Group Targets Local Election In National Initiative To Help Big Pharma”

Stand For US After Action Memo

Step 1: Start with the Advertisement

Every investigation begins with the most public-facing piece of evidence: the political commun...

West Virginia, with its unique economic dependence on extractive industries and strong cultural identity, has served as a laboratory for corporate actors seeking to manipulate public opinion through the appropriation of deeply held cultural values.

The Architecture of Corporate Misinformation in West Virginia

The Coal Industry's Cultural War Machinery

The most extensively documented case of corporate cultural war manipulation in West...

Let me paint you a picture: It's Sunday afternoon in Austin, and instead of nursing hangovers, roughly 30 Texas House Democrats are speed-walking through Signature Aviation like they're fleeing a zombie apocalypse. Except the zombies are Republicans with redistricting software, and the safe house is Illinois.

Welcome to American democracy in 2025, where the most effective legislative maneuver involves actual maneuvering—specifically...

From the Archives: I've been sitting on this one for months, waiting for the right moment. That moment was apparently when my patience finally ran out and my give-a-damn broke completely. You're welcome.

Listen up, gentlemen. We need to talk.

I know, I know—another woman telling you what you did wrong. But stick with me here, because this isn't about hurt feelings or political correctness. This is about cold, hard cash and the fact t...

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President Donald Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics hours after a stunning government report showed that hiring had slowed down significantly, and we just witnessed political evolution in real time.

Not the good kind. The extinction kind.

Let me paint you a picture: The U.S. added just 73,000 ne...

Note: This is a thought experiment exploring strategic political reasoning, not an endorsement of any particular electoral tactics.

Picture this: You're playing a game where the rules explicitly say "no cheating," but your opponent has been marking cards for decades while the referee looks the other way. Do you keep playing by the official rulebook, or do you start marking cards too until everyone agrees the game is broken?

Welcome t...

Listen up, beautiful humans with opinions about my robot voice,

Here's some radical transparency: Yes, I use Speechify. No, I don't have a professional studio. And here's the plot twist that apparently broke some brains—I chose substance over sound quality because I'm running a one-person political revolution, not auditioning for NPR.

The loudest complaints about my AI voice come exclusively from people who have produced exactly zero...

Listen up, my fellow political evolution enthusiasts. We need to talk about partisanship, and I'm going to need you to put down your team jersey for five minutes while we examine the greatest con job in American political history.

Picture this: You're at a carnival, and there's a guy with three shells and a ball. You know it's a scam, but you keep playing anyway because surely this time you'll win. That's partisanship in a nutshell,...

After publishing my piece about grocery financing, I kept getting the same question: "How did you see what that advertisement was really doing?"

The honest answer is that I was raised by Tupac and Eminem. Not literally—though that might have been preferable to some of the actual adults in charge during the 1990s. I mean I learned more about how power actually works from listening to "Brenda's Got a Baby" and "Changes" than from any ...

Listen up, buttercups, because your Pissed-Off Professor is about to commit the ultimate sin in American politics: I'm refusing to pick a team.

That's right. I won't call people "Democrats" or "Republicans" anymore. I won't play along with this theatrical nonsense where we pretend that slapping a party label on someone tells us anything meaningful about their actual beliefs, competence, or moral character.

In my last post, I explaine...

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Well, I took that scenic route through the entire political landscape, from nonpartisan public servant to exploited volunteer to blocked reformer, and let me tell you something: the infrastructure is still broken, held together with duct tape and denial, but now I know exactly where all the potholes are.

And I'm about to hand you the map.

The Great Political Ponzi Scheme

Here's ...