CARDINALSharpen your debate.
The arsenal the national champion preps with. Cut the card, find the evidence, take theirs apart.
Congestion pricing cuts traffic and pays for transit
Cities that priced congestion saw downtown traffic fall 18 percent in the first year.
Used by the Public Forum Nationals winner
Try it, no account
Cut a card right here.
Edit the article, set the tag, press Cut. Underline is what you read, highlight is the emphasis, bold is the power word.
Your cut card shows up here
underlined = read aloud, highlighted = emphasis, bold = power words
This demo runs in your browser with a simple rule. The real cutter reads any article link and picks the passage for your tag.
The Arsenal
Every step of prep, faster than the other team.
Search, cut, attack, block, practice. One login. Here are the three moves you will make in your first five minutes.
01 / Search
Type the claim. Get the cards.
Cardinal searches the web and opencaselist, then cuts ready-to-read cards from credible sources with the cite already written.
- Web + opencaselist in one query
- Every result comes back cut and highlighted
- Sources you can defend in cross
Carbon pricing cut emissions 11 percent in the first two years
webOkafor 25, Nature Climate
The authors find a significant effect across the sample.
41 words read aloud
Revenue recycling made the policy progressive for the bottom quintile
opencaselistLindqvist 24, JPE
The authors find a significant effect across the sample.
37 words read aloud
Border adjustments neutralized leakage to unpriced markets
webGhosh 25, Brookings
The authors find a significant effect across the sample.
52 words read aloud
Firms under a carbon price invested 14 percent more in clean capital
webMartin 24, AER
The authors find a significant effect across the sample.
44 words read aloud
02 / Cut
Paste a link. Read the card.
Drop in any article and a tag. Cardinal finds the strongest passage and marks exactly what you read aloud: underline, highlight, bold. Verbatim, always.
- Link first: no walls of pasted text
- Two-pass highlighting like a real cut
- Your highlight color, your word count
Source
Tag
Congestion pricing cuts traffic and cleans the air
Rivera 24, Urban Mobility Review
The analysis covered 31 cities over three years. Cities that priced congestion saw downtown traffic fall 18 percentin year one, and air quality improved in eleven of the cities, with particulate levels down nine percent on average. The authors caution that transit alternatives must exist first.
03 / Attack
Their best card, taken apart.
Paste an opponent's evidence and Cardinal exposes power-tagging, dated data, missing causation and contradictions, plus the cross-ex questions that land.
- Flags you can read in prep time
- Turns and CX questions included
- Works on PF, LD and Policy cards
Their card
"Congestion pricing collapses downtown retail"
Patel 19, City Journal
Two cities reported lower foot traffic in the year after a charge was proposed, which the author attributes to pricing pressure on retailers.
Power-tagged
The tag says 'collapse'; the card says 'pressure'.
Dated
2019 data, before the policy took effect.
No causal link
Correlation across two cities, no control.
Cross-ex
"Does your author study any city after the charge began?"
Now free for everyone
Free prep: the Sep/Oct topic.
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From source to card
Watch a card get cut.
01Raw article
Paste a link or the text. Nothing marked yet, just the source.
02Underlined
03Cut
04Ready for round
Raw article
urbanmobilityreview.org/2024/congestion-pricing-31-cities
Congestion charges have been debated since the first London scheme in 2003. A 2024 analysis of 31 cities that adopted congestion pricing found that downtown traffic fell by 18 percent within the first year. Revenue from the charge, roughly 2.1 billion dollars across the sample, was directed to transit expansion and road maintenance. Air quality improved measurably in eleven of the cities, with particulate levels falling by an average of nine percent. The authors caution that results depend on reliable transit alternatives being in place before the charge begins.
Before and after
Prep by hand, or walk in prepped.
- Find a sourceTwenty tabs, a paywall, and a PDF you skim at 1 a.m.Type the claim. Cards from the web and opencaselist, already cut.
- Cut a cardCopy, paste, underline, highlight, bold, re-check the cite.Paste a link and a tag. Highlighted, verbatim card in seconds.
- Answer their caseGuess what they will run, write blocks from scratch.Every contention and block for the PF topic, with the cut cards.
- Pressure-test evidenceHope you spot the power-tag in cross-ex.Attack a Card flags it in prep time, with the CX questions.
- PracticeNeeds a partner, a judge, and a free Saturday.Timed rounds with an AI judge and a written ballot (Pro).
- CostBriefs and camps run hundreds of dollars a topic.Core tools free forever. Pro $10 a month or $75 a season.
The Arsenal
One arsenal. Every round.
Every tool a debater needs to walk in sharper than the other team. The free tools come first; Pro unlocks the rest.
AI Card Cutter
FreePaste an article and a tag, Cardinal finds the strongest passage and highlights the exact words you read aloud.Card Search
FreeType a claim. Cardinal searches the web and opencaselist, then cuts ready-to-run cards from credible sources.Attack a Card
FreePaste an opponent's card and Cardinal exposes its contradictions, power-tagging, shaky assumptions, and turns, plus cross-ex questions.Rhetoric Mode
FreeTurn any card into a smooth spoken sentence, the evidence stays word-for-word, only the delivery gets polished.PF Archive
FreeFree for the Sep/Oct topic. Cardinal shows the contentions people ran and the blockfiles (premade rebuttals) to answer them, with the cut cards, sorted by category and side.Word Count
ProUpload a doc and count only the highlighted words you actually read aloud, know your speech length.The Archive
ProPre-made kritiks, topicality, theory, framework, spark and wipeout, ready to browse, copy, and run.Blockfile GEN
ProBETA. Paste a block outline and Cardinal fills every block with real cut cards (and analytics where no card fits), on your side, formatted like a hand-cut file.My Cases
ProOrganize cards into files and contentions, then export a whole case to a single Word doc.Practice Rounds
ProRun live rounds with synced timers, prep clocks, chat, and an AI judge that hands back a rubric ballot.Judge Prep
ProPaste a paradigm for a cheat-sheet, or look up a judge's Tabroom record, how often they vote Aff vs Neg across their history.AI Coach
ProA conversational coach that pulls real cards from your library and Archive to build cited blocks.
Ambassadors
Bring your team. Earn Pro.
Every debater gets an invite link. Teammates who sign up with it count toward free Pro time, and at 15 referrals you become a Cardinal Ambassador: named on this page, badged in the app.
- Tier 15referrals3 days of Pro, free
- Tier 220referrals1 month of Pro, free
- Tier 330referrals3 months of Pro, free
Current ambassadors
The roster opens with the first 5 ambassadors. Reach 15 referrals and your name is one of them.
Demo
See Cardinal in action.
A short walkthrough of the Arsenal. Click to play.
Walk in sharper than the other team.
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