Welcome Back to Barf Bag

In 2017, to handle the daily deluge of stomach-turning news that was the Donald Trump presidency, Jezebel launched a political version of Dirt Bag, our signature gossip column. “Staff writer Ellie Shechet christened it Barf Bag, a perfect name for the queasiness produced by the endless roller coaster of the Trump administration, a perfect name for an administration whose ideology was sickening,” then-features editor Stassa Edwards wrote in 2021 after President Joe Biden was inaugurated and the headlines were no longer dominated by the commander-in-chief’s 3 a.m. incoherent, potentially war-starting Twitter rants. Blessedly, the need for a daily Barf Bag was no more.

While the 2016-2020 Trump-dominated news cycle is long over—and god willing, we’ll never be in anything like it again (knocking on infinite wood)—there are still plenty of far-right Republican MAGA idiots in this country who appear to be locked in a battle to win the prize of Most Racist, Most Sexist, and Most Homophobic Moron (MRMSMHM). So to address that unfortunate reality, we’re re-launching Barf Bag as a weekly roundup. In three weeks, we’ll make it a subscriber exclusive, so if you want to ensure constant access to it, you can subscribe here.

Our dedicated political coverage will of course continue, but Barf Bag will be where we compile the stories we laughed at in Slack or couldn’t get to because our writers were focusing on covering attacks on abortion rights; the war in Gaza; or Biden’s inability to adequately address either.

So, welcome back to Barf Bag. We hope it’s more fun than horrifying. And fingers aggressively crossed that nothing happens this year that would make us feel the need to turn this back into a daily roundup.