There’s a story making headlines again - a powerful man, a teenage girl, and a media cycle eager to flatten everything into a tidy narrative about “trafficking.” But when you read past the outrage and into the details, something else becomes painfully clear: this isn’t a story about sex work.

Let’s skip the polite economic euphemisms and call this what it is: we are headed straight for the mountain, and the seatbelt light just came on. Inflation’s not cooling; it’s calcifying. Wages haven’t caught up, rent’s still a blood sport, groceries feel like luxury items, and if you’ve tried to buy a used car lately, you know it’s giving “end times barter system” vibes. 

We’re in strange terrain now: the federal government is treating cities like Portland and Chicago as frontline zones in a migration war....