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Bye Bye, Blue Sky – by Teri Carter
Bye Bye, Blue Sky On doomscrolling and the Democrats. Teri Carter Aug 21, 2025 As the sun prepared to set last evening under a heavily clouded, not-blue sky, I walked down to the dock and sat there until the two turtles I was watching — one large, one teeny tiny — slipped sideways off the…
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Smithsonian Museums – August 20, 2025 – by Heather Cox Richardson
Letters from an American Smithsonian Museums – August 20, 2025 Heather Cox Richardson, Aug 20, 2025 President Donald J. Trump created a firestorm yesterday when he said that the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex, located mostly in Washington, D.C., focuses too much on “how bad slavery was.” But his objection…
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Letters from an American – August 19, 2025 – by Heather Cox Richardson
Letters from an American August 19, 2025, Heather Cox Richardson Yesterday, the 51 Democratic Texas state representatives who left the state for Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts on August 3 to prevent Republican lawmakers from redistricting Texas to give five Democratic congressional seats to Republicans went back home. Immediately, they discovered that Republican House speaker…
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Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance – Conduct Unbecoming – August 19, 2025
Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance Conduct Unbecoming Joyce Vance, Aug 19, 2025 This is a real post from the U.S. Department of Justice account on Twitter. It’s an apparent response to the sandwich throwing incident, which, while technically an assault, is an insufficient provocation for the Justice Department to threaten to “come after” any protester…
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Letters from an American – August 18, 2025 – by Heather Cox Richardson
Letters from an American, August 18, 2025 By Heather Cox Richardson, Aug 18, 2025 This morning, J.D. Wolf of Meidas News pulled together all of Trump’s self-congratulatory posts from Sunday morning, when the president evidently was boosting his ego after Friday’s disastrous meeting with Russia’s president Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Trump shared an AI-generated meme…
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Seeing Things – Trump’s Adoration Of Putin – by Liza Donnelly
The above drawing was bought by The New Yorker during the Iraq war, I think, but they never ran it. Trump said after the meeting with Putin in Alaska last week that Ukraine would have to make concessions because Russia was a more “powerful” country. He obviously does not understand the importance, and power,…
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Letters from an American – August 16, 2025 – by Heather Cox Richardson
Letters from an American By Heather Cox Richardson, Aug 16, 2025 Yesterday, military personnel from the United States of America literally rolled out a red carpet for a dictator who invaded a sovereign country and is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes including the stealing of children. Apparently coached by his team,…
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Moving The Window – Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance
Moving The Window By Joyce Vance, Aug 16, 2025 Tonight’s piece runs longer than I like to, especially on a Saturday night, but the issues are serious, and incumbent upon us all to stay caught up. Thanks for being here and for reading Civil Discourse. If it helps you understand these issues better, I hope…
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Letters from an American – August 13, 2025 -Heather Cox Richardson
August 13, 2025, By Heather Cox Richardson On August 14, 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law. While he had already put in place new measures to regulate business and banking and had provided temporary work relief to combat the Depression, this law permanently changed the nature of the American…
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Civil Discourse – Congress may have the spending power, but Trump can usurp it if they won’t protect it. And they haven’t. – Joyce Vance
By Joyce Vance, Aug 13, 2025 This afternoon, a three-judge panel in the D.C. Circuit signed off on the Trump administration’s efforts to block funds for foreign assistance that have been appropriated by Congress. Despite arguments made by the plaintiffs that this violates Congress’ Article II Spending powers, the court ruled that only the head…
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Civil Discourse – When The President Becomes The Police – Joyce Vance
By Joyce Vance, Aug 11, 2025 The Posse Comitatus Act reserves the police power to the states, prohibiting the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement absent truly compelling circumstances. This principle can be extended to the National Guard when a president federalizes a state’s troops. That’s the very issue that Judge…
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Letters from an American – August 11, 2025 – Heather Cox Richardson
Heather Cox Richardson Aug 11, 2025 President Donald J. Trump’s big announcement today at his press conference—to which he showed up late—was that he is assuming control over the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department and deploying more than 100 agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and about 40 from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,…
