Part 1 – The Parking Lot Encounter Two years of quiet ended in the most ordinary of places: a parking lot between a crooked row of shopping carts...
At a recent White House press briefing, Vice President JD Vance made a remark about healthcare for undocumented immigrants that has gone viral — and many Americans are...
Part 1 – Buttons at the Diner Counter The Desert Star Diner sat along a lonely stretch of Route 54, just outside Tucumcari, New Mexico. To most travelers...
Sometimes global diplomacy looks less like strategy and more like late-night comedy. Former President Donald Trump has long bragged that he “solved wars that were unsolvable.” For example,...
The first time I watched Frank “Sarge” Riley die, it was on a twelve-inch screen in the dim hum of my office—the Wi-Fi buffering like a tiny, anxious...
Why a dying, runaway biker spent his final moments becoming a wall between danger and a silent seven-year-old girl. Paramedics would later say they found only two things...
The VFW hall smelled faintly of coffee and old wood polish. Neon signs hummed over the raffle table, their glow fighting with the fluorescent ceiling lights. The Iron...
The small pink backpack sat alone on the bench, waiting for a child to claim it, just as if it had been placed there for recess, to be...
After a long day at work, all I wanted was to relax. I was looking forward to taking a shower, changing into my comfiest pajamas, and curling up...
The Knock at Midnight I am Samuel “Doc” Hayes. Army medic, retired not by choice but by a roadside bomb that took my right leg and left my...