#libraryofcongress — Public Fediverse posts

Library News

https://barland7.wordpress.com/2026/09/06/library-news-25/

"Soul Man" is a 1967 song written and composed by #IsaacHayes and #DavidPorter, first successful as a number 2 hit single by #AtlanticRecords #soul duo #SamAndDave, which consisted of #SamuelSamMoore and #DavidDavePrater. In 2019, "Soul Man" was selected for preservation in the #NationalRecordingRegistry as "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" by the #LibraryOfCongress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTWH1Fdkjow

"Soul Man" is a 1967 song written and composed by #IsaacHayes and #DavidPorter, first successful as a number 2 hit single by #AtlanticRecords #soul duo #SamAndDave, which consisted of #SamuelSamMoore and #DavidDavePrater. In 2019, "Soul Man" was selected for preservation in the #NationalRecordingRegistry as "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" by the #LibraryOfCongress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTWH1Fdkjow

"Soul Man" is a 1967 song written and composed by #IsaacHayes and #DavidPorter, first successful as a number 2 hit single by #AtlanticRecords #soul duo #SamAndDave, which consisted of #SamuelSamMoore and #DavidDavePrater. In 2019, "Soul Man" was selected for preservation in the #NationalRecordingRegistry as "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" by the #LibraryOfCongress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTWH1Fdkjow

"Soul Man" is a 1967 song written and composed by #IsaacHayes and #DavidPorter, first successful as a number 2 hit single by #AtlanticRecords #soul duo #SamAndDave, which consisted of #SamuelSamMoore and #DavidDavePrater. In 2019, "Soul Man" was selected for preservation in the #NationalRecordingRegistry as "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" by the #LibraryOfCongress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTWH1Fdkjow

"Soul Man" is a 1967 song written and composed by #IsaacHayes and #DavidPorter, first successful as a number 2 hit single by #AtlanticRecords #soul duo #SamAndDave, which consisted of #SamuelSamMoore and #DavidDavePrater. In 2019, "Soul Man" was selected for preservation in the #NationalRecordingRegistry as "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" by the #LibraryOfCongress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTWH1Fdkjow

"Soul Man" is a 1967 song written and composed by #IsaacHayes and #DavidPorter, first successful as a number 2 hit single by #AtlanticRecords #soul duo #SamAndDave, which consisted of #SamuelSamMoore and #DavidDavePrater. In 2019, "Soul Man" was selected for preservation in the #NationalRecordingRegistry as "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" by the #LibraryOfCongress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbXw4EFioRI

"Soul Man" is a 1967 song written and composed by #IsaacHayes and #DavidPorter, first successful as a number 2 hit single by #AtlanticRecords #soul duo #SamAndDave, which consisted of #SamuelSamMoore and #DavidDavePrater. In 2019, "Soul Man" was selected for preservation in the #NationalRecordingRegistry as "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" by the #LibraryOfCongress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM0TUtqddpg

What To Watch On YouTube Right Now – Part 138

Welcome back my readers, YouTube viewers and all others who followed this series of articles focused on YouTube videos worth watching.

Have you been searching for something fun or interesting to watch on YouTube? Do you feel bored right now and you crave for something to see on the world’s most popular online video destination?

I recommend you check out the following videos I found.

#1 How To Get The Strongest And Most Optimized Spaceship Crew In Starfield – This year, Bethesda launched several important updates to make their 2023 science fiction role-playing game Starfield better and they also offered new DLC for those who crave for new content. One of the more defining aspects of the game is space travel and this includes setting up your own crew for your spaceship and there is impact on its functions and capabilities. If you want to learn how to get the stronger and most optimized crew for your ship, I encourage you watch the video below.

https://youtu.be/vy8iOx7eqVU?si=gn7W1mZxTOQ4SSrd

#2 Mari Iijima And The Defining Song of Macross: Do You Remember Love? – I really love watching the 1984 anime feature film Macross: Do You Remember Love? Apart from the great animation, the spectacle, the memorable characters and the solid storytelling, the movie also has a great soundtrack made to delight the long-time Macross fans. Still, the movie has its very own song performed by none other than Mari Iijima (Minmay) and it is a classic among Macross fans. In the videos below, you will see Mari Iijima perform the song live in a 1980s TV broadcast and the song playing with selected footage of Macross: Do You Remember Love? Enjoy these!

https://youtu.be/OfuW_Wbt73c?si=Q1DE8eJxo4Zk90pc

https://youtu.be/uJBMYV9e1Nc?si=veDGYU4r7s0flQ_H

#3 The Tuna City In Japan Is Changing With Tourism In Mind – If you plan to visit Japan at all, you might want to discover Miura City located in Kanagawa Prefecture. Miura City is famous for its fresh tuna and in recent times there has been a series of changes as several room-only hotels and new trends have sprouted as the locality is finding new ways to turn visitors into overnight guests. This is a place I would like to visit someday if ever I get the opportunity to return to Japan. Watch and learn from the Nippon TV video below.

https://youtu.be/fUPP30fYH78?si=MrC6Dml3IRVe7fcV

#4 Women’s Rights Activist Marries Islamist And Things Went Wrong – Did you notice that there is a gradual rising number of feminists and women’s rights activists who not embrace Islam (wicked and ugly) but also marry Islamists believing that things will be alright and they can just continue their activism. Of course, many of them activists and feminists do not fully understand Islam nor the full content of the Quran. As such, when things go very wrong, they are get into deep trouble. Watch and learn from the video below.

https://youtu.be/bx3YvoyP6cw?si=omxqhyR8CQfpfhYK

#5 Islamists Violate Hindu Women In India And Get Arrested – Let’s be very clear here. Islamists are oriented to conquer others even though they may not be numerous within a locality. Believe it or not, a group of such people who wielded power inside a business violated the Hindu women (plus at least one male employee) with regards to cultural norms and doing things that go against their faith. Even forced religious conversion happened. Watch and learn from the video below.

https://youtu.be/9xjFS-3Vuws?si=xuDIivIonrp9tQux

#6 Meatballs Reaction And Retrospective – When it comes to cinematic comedy, Bill Murray is iconic and his early work in 1979’s Meatballs already involved the late Harold Ramis and the late director Ivan Reitman. That said, there is something about Meatballs – produced for less than $2 million – that helped it achieve tremendous commercial success with ticket sales of $70 million. Remember, three of the creative minds behind the classic Ghostbusters are involved in this old movie and you will see how You, Me and The Movies react to it in the video below. Be aware that as of this writing, there are not too many movie reaction videos about Meatballs on YouTube. Also posted below is an in-depth retrospective about Meatballs by GoodBadFlicks.

https://youtu.be/nhR9xUCvpAI?si=Zh6gjAX0SdIrtSfT

https://youtu.be/D0BS-K3K_vE?si=HtyR_VThLUKv0Wj6

#7 Ashleigh Burton Reacts To The Thin Man – Have you ever heard of The Thin Man? It’s not a UFO reference. It’s the 1934 American pre-Code comedy-mystery movie that was eventually named to the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress having been deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” in 1997. Apart from its reputation in American film history, The Thin Man also resulted in five sequels. If you want to discover the 1934 movie but you don’t have the time nor resources to watch the movie, watch Ashleigh Burton’s reaction video and see how it impacts her.

https://youtu.be/IJRQXuw–20?si=mSYY7_Eb4EK6reBY

+++++

Thank you for reading. If you find this article engaging, please click the like button below, share this article to others and also please consider making a donation to support my publishing. If you are looking for a copywriter to create content for your special project or business, check out my services and my portfolio. Feel free to contact me with a private message. Also please feel free to visit my Facebook page Author Carlo Carrasco and follow me on Twitter at @CarloCarrascoPH as well as on Tumblr at https://carlocarrasco.tumblr.com/ and on Instagram athttps://www.instagram.com/authorcarlocarrasco

Plunder, Mystery, and Intrigue: Visiting the British Museum and the British Library

After leaving the Lake District, I traveled to London by train, for the third part of my trip. This was where I saw the most libraries during my trip. On my last day in London, August 3rd, I visited the British Museum, located in London’s West End, which was overcrowded with tourists. This made viewing the so-called “chronicle of Western collection,” which was acquired through extensive plunder and theft, as American tour guide Rick Steves describes the museum, very uncomfortable. Even so, there were two highlights. The first was the stately and round reading room. English writers Virginia Woolf and Beatrix Potter, Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, radical thinkers Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, women’s rights campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst, independence activist Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Irish author Bram Stoker all studied there.

Note: This serves as second part of my series on this blog about my library tourism last year, with the first part, about my attempted and successful library tourism in Edinburgh and Northern England, posted on this blog last week. The series begins, chronologically, with my guest post on Reel Librarians, on February 11th, in a post entitled “Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland: Library tourism redux.” It will be reposted on here over a month later. There will be one more parts of this series, focusing on my continued library tourism in Belgium coming next week.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, as noted in Doyle’s “The Complete Sherlock Holmes,” studied in the reading room. In the 1893 short story “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” (sometimes abbreviated as “The Musgrave Ritual”), he studied “those branches of science which might make me more efficient” in the reading room. He learned other information from the British Museum in chapter 15 of 1902 novel The Hound of the Baskervilles and “The Tiger of San Pedro” chapter, within a 1917 collection entitled His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes (sometimes abbreviated as “His Last Bow”). There are mentions of libraries in the short stories “The Five Orange Pips”, “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”, and “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” in the 1892 short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

The same is the case for “The Musgrave Ritual,” “The ‘Gloria Scott’”, and “The Reigate Squires” all within the 1893 short story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and the stories “The Adventures of the Three Students” and “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez” in the 1905 short story collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Apart from that, chapter 10 of The Hound of the Baskervilles, chapter 7 of the 1915 novel The Valley of Fear, and the story “The Problem of Thorn Bridge” in the 1927 set of short stories The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes feature libraries as well. Lastly, there’s a mention of a London Library in St. James’s Square and Lomax, who is said to be a “sublibrarian,” in “The Illustrious Client.” This is another short story within The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.

In an email communication, Nathalie Belkin, an archivist who works for the London Library, told me that Doyle was a library member, joining in 1896 after his friend, and fellow writer, Arthur Griffith, nominated him. According to Belkin, Doyle was an active library user, even serving on the library’s committee. In fact, it is believed that The Illustrious Client, also entitled The Adventure of the Illustrious Client, was written in the library’s main reading room. While the borrowing history from the time has been lost, he was a “well-known fixture” of the library.

Otherwise, Karl Marx formulated ideas on communism, including within Das Kapital (also known as Capital), in the aforementioned reading room within the British Museum. Displays within the room describe it as a place for diverse thought. Many patrons left behind their mark in the visitors log. It was even one of the first places in London to have electric light (in 1879)! The room could, at maximum, hold 302 readers sitting at 38 tables, sitting across from each other, and was heated from underneath. Readers would consult a catalogue of printed books in the room’s center, then fill out a request form. In some ways, this makes this room similar to the Library of Congress’s Reading Room, since books for the British Library could be accessed there until they were moved to their current location in 1997. In fact, 62,000 people came when this reading room opened in 1857. A sign, when looking into the reading room, tells visitors to be quiet, feeding into the common conception of libraries as quiet places, which is not always the case for all libraries anymore.

What Rick Steves didn’t mention is that the historic reading room only re-opened to the public in 2024 after being closed for eleven years. The room was designed by Sydney Smirke, inspired by Rome’s domed Pantheon, and opened in 1857. It first re-opened to visitors in 2000 (after it stopped being an active reading room in 1997), then closed in 2013, when it was used for archival storage. The room, described by some as “legendary,” “stunning,” and an impressive sight for bibliophiles (protagonist and book-defender Elianna Bernstein of Bibliophile Princess would be right at home there) is not technically a library anymore. You can’t borrow any of the 25,000 books, and photography is now permitted (it wasn’t previously). Even so, it is still a marvel to see. You can even go on a twenty-minute tour there and there is currently a plan to completely transform the galleries and reading room.

The second highlight was the Enlightenment Gallery, formerly known as the King’s Library. It once held the British Library’s treasures when it was founded in 1753. Today it holds objects about the Age of Enlightenment, as Rick Steves notes. A display board, when you enter the room, says that it was developed in partnership with the House of Commons Library and the Natural History Museum. The current books on display are being loaned from the House of Commons Library. The aforementioned display notes that those who lent non-book artifacts to the gallery included the British King, the Science Museum in London, King’s College in London, Wellcome Collection, Society of Antiquities of London, Victor and Albert Museum, the Linnean Society of London, and the Royal Asiatic Society (also in London). Of these institutions, most have their own libraries. In fact, the D. Leonard Corgan Library at Kings College, the college’s main library, served as a location in Dan Brown’s controversial novel The Da Vinci Code. The building’s exterior appeared in the 2020 film Enola Holmes, a mystery film about Sherlock Holmes’ teenage sister.

The room itself was originally created, in 1823, to house King George II’s library, hence the original name. It was designed by architect Robert Smirke, known for the British Museum’s main facade and block, along with various clubs and houses within London. Of these, the Inner Temple, for which he did some work on, has a library, which continues to operate to this day, as did Bickley Hall. Smike also completed building restoration of the Bodleian Library’s Upper Reading room, which is part of the “old library.” As for the Enlightenment Gallery, it has a Greek Revival design, with neoclassical decoration. It’s said to be in keeping with the “styles of libraries in grand houses all over Britain” at the time, with claims it has echoes of “ancient wisdom and learning.” In 1998, the British Library moved to a new location across from the current St. Pancras station. The latter is not to be confused with pancreas or the Japanese anime film which centers on libraries and librarians, entitled I Want to Eat Your Pancreas. It is far too easy to call it “pancreas” by mistake, a name that almost stuck with me.

This gallery is where thousands of objects can be viewed and serves as an introduction to the British Museum’s collections. Even so, for me, I visited it at the end of my time at the overcrowded museum. I was inspired to visit this room by one particular scene in the December 2011 anime film, K-On! the Movie, a spinoff from the 2009-2010 anime series, K-On!. It features two episodes with libraries, including one about studying in the library and featuring a student librarian at an information desk. In fact, I rewatched this film before my trip to London, just for this scene. During the film, Yui Hirasawa, Ritsu Tainaka, Mio Akiyama, Azusa Nakano, and Tsumugi Kotobuki bop around London, visiting many sites, including walking through the strangely empty Great Court of the British Museum. They make their way into the gallery. During a short scene, Azusa points out that the Rosetta Stone (she put it on their itinerary) is also a replica. In fact, they used a replica in a school play as the death stone for a Romeo & Juliet play, because the fake tombstone they wanted to use had been misplaced.

The British Museum also has the actual Rosetta Stone in the Egyptian sculpture room, but like Yui, Ritsu, Mio, Azusa, and Tsumugi, I only looked at and touched the replica. The aforementioned gallery likely would have been overcrowded, as the gallery rooms I visited were extremely overcrowded and not suited for visitors. They had inadequate airflow and no overhead fans. As for the film, there were a few other short library scenes in the private all-girls school the protagonists attend, Sakuragaoka High School.

The same day I visited the British Museum, I visited the British Library. It sits across from St. Pancras station, and would be the last library I visited in the U.K. As Rick Steves put it, the British empire built its “greatest monuments out of paper.” The library holds every publication within the U.K. and Northern Ireland, with over 170 million items, such as sacred texts, maps, the Magna Carta, Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebook, plays by William Shakespeare, and lyrics of songs by the Beatles. This library, established by an act of Parliament in July 1972 and opened in July 1973, is one of the biggest in the world. It’s only rivaled by the Library of Congress, Russian State Library in Moscow, or Shanghai Library in China. Many such institutions are the legal deposit libraries for their respective countries. Anyone is open to explore the British Library reading rooms and peruse exhibits. You can get a readers registration pass if you are over 18, allowing you to enter the reading rooms.

When I visited, on August 3rd, the reading rooms for humanities, manuscripts, rare books, music, science, maps, and Asian and African studies, were not open. I even saw rooms reserved for the sole purpose of prayer, and went through the “Treasures of the British Library” exhibit in the St. John Ritblat Gallery. It contained many of the artifacts I noted in the previous paragraph. Perhaps because they have the space, the British Library holds the library collections of the British Museum. Rare books fill the middle of the library in a massive climate-controlled column, allowing the upper floors to only be accessed by stairs or elevators, and affecting the structure of each floor. There was also a fascinating collection of foreign currency, stamps, and other postage from former British colonies, called the Philatelic Collection. It could be easily overlooked, but was fun to look through, especially in the way it was displayed.

Like the British museums I visited during my travels, they asked for a donation, but they were free to enter, without payment or restriction. The number of visitors using the study area made clear that they were open to all, in line with library ethical principles, as did the books in their bookshop, some of which would likely be on banned books lists of in U.S. libraries. In the next part of this series, I’ll talk briefly about the university library I visited in Belgium.

© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

Sources used

• “About this Reading Room,” Library of Congress, 2025.
• “About Us,” British Library, 2025.
• “About us,” House of Commons Library, 2025.
• “About us,” Royal Asiatic Society, 2025.
• “About us,” Wellcome Collection, 2025.
• “Archives,” London Library, 2025.
• Barker, Sam. “The British Museum’s Secretive Round Reading Room Has Reopened To The Public,” Secret London, 4 Jul. 2024.
• “Bickley,” Wikishire, 13 Jul. 2025.
• “D. Leonard Corgan Library,” Kings College, 2025.
• “Dana Research Centre and Library,” Science Museum, 2025.
• “Everything you ever wanted to know about the Rosetta Stone,” British Museum, 2025.
• Fox, Caroline. “Every Enola Holmes Filming Location (And What Every Place Looks Like Now),” ScreenRant, 26 Oct. 2020.
• Funk, Alex. “The British Museum’s mysterious domed Reading Room has officially reopened to the public,” TimeOut, 3 Jul. 2024.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Librarians and libraries in anime,” Pop Culture Library Review, 2025 (orig. 25 Jul. 2020).
• Hermann, Burkely. “More than a coming-of-age drama: The value of libraries and librarians in “I Want To Eat Your Pancreas”,” Pop Culture Library Review, 8 Jan. 2024.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Recently added titles (March 2025),” Pop Culture Library Review, 2 Apr. 2025.
• Hermann, Burkely. “The fictional library and the value of studying redux,” Pop Culture Library Review, 30 Jul. 2024.
• Hickley, Catherine. “British Museum’s historic Reading Room opens to the public after 11 years,” The Art Newspaper, 3 Jul. 2024.
• “History of The London Library,” London Library, 2025.
• “Library,” Linnean Society of London, 2025.
• “Library & Collections,” Society of Antiquities of London, 2024.
• Mathur, Rhea. “The British Museum’s Reading Room: Past and Present,” gowithyamo, 2 Sept. 2024.
• Moran, Sarah. “The British Museum’s Stunning Domed Reading Room Reopens to Public,” Home Journal, 27 Sept. 2024.
• “National Art Library,” Victor and Albert Museum, 2025.
• “Philatelic Collections: Introduction,” British Library, 29 Mar. 2010.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Remembering “Bibliophile Princess” and its significant fictional depiction of libraries,” Pop Culture Library Review, 14 May 2024.
• “Spaces at the Bodleian Old Library,” Bodleian Library, 2025.
• “Spotlight: the Reading Room,” British Museum, 2025.
• Steves, Rick and Openshaw, Gene. London (24th Edition, US: Avalon Travel, Sept. 2022): 212, 214-215, 236, 238, 240, 244-247, 249.
• “Strand Campus: Self-guided tour,” King’s College, 5 Oct. 2014, p. 8.
•  “The British Library Philatelic Collection,” The Royal Philatelic Society London, Nov. 2005.
• “The Present Buildings,” Inner Temple Library, 2025.
• “Treasures of the British Library,” British Library, 2025.
• “Update on progress with the Masterplan,” British Museum, 19 Dec. 2024.

#AncientEgypt #archives #ArthurConanDoyle #artifacts #BeatrixPotter #Belgium #BibliophilePrincess #BlackPatrons #BlackPeople #BramStoker #BritishLibrary #BritishMuseum #China #ChinesePatrons #colonialism #communism #electricity #EnolaHolmes #HouseOfCommonsLibrary #JapanesePatrons #JenniferSnoekBrown #KOn #KOnTheMovie #KarlMarx #LibraryOfCongress #libraryStereotypes #libraryTourism #LondonLibrary #MarcusGarvey #MohandasKGandhi #quiet #railroads #reading #ReelLibrarians #restrictions #RickSteves #RosettaStone #royalLibraries #royalty #Russia #RussianStateLibrary #ShanghaiLibrary #SherlockHolmes #SunYatSen #SylviaPankhurst #TheBeatles #TheDaVinciCode #TheIllustriousClient #trains #VirginiaWoolf #WhiteLibrarians #WhiteMen #WhitePatrons

Donald Trump Calling Women Pigs and More -A Brief History – Vanity Fair

Editor’s Note: Thank you, Vanity Fair. Excellent report and coverage of this outrageous exchange by this poor President. Time for 25th Replacement…

Politics

Donald Trump Calling Women Pigs and More: A Brief History

The president recently revisited one of his favorite insults for women he doesn’t like, snapping, “Quiet, piggy,” at a female reporter who dared to ask a question about Jeffrey Epstein.

By Eric Lutz, November 19, 2025

He had deflected her first question, about a recently released Jeffrey Epstein email in which the late sex trafficker said Trump “knew about the girls.” Lucey was merely doing her job. But Trump, of course, doesn’t have much respect for good journalism—or, it would seem, for women, as his puerile “piggy” taunt indicates.

The exchange—which has since gone viral—is shocking in its crudeness and nastiness, even by Trump administration standards. But this is also a familiar insult for Trump. Alicia Machado, a former Miss Universe pageant winner, previously said that Trump once called her “Miss Piggy.” Trump didn’t exactly deny the incident after Hillary Clinton brought it up during a 2016 debate.

“She gained a massive amount of weight,” Trump said of Machado on Fox & Friends the next morning, apparently in defense of his insult, “and it was a real problem.” During another debate that cycle, before he became the GOP’s nominee, moderator Megyn Kelly noted that Trump had “called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.”

“Only Rosie O’Donnell,” Trump replied, referring to the comedian he’s been feuding with for nearly 20 years now.

Trump doesn’t only love comparing women to pigs. In 2011, The New York Times’ Gail Collins wrote that Trump once told her she had “the face of a dog.” In 2018 he described Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former Apprentice contestant and White House aide, as a “dog” and a “lying lowlife.”

Trump also dubbed Stormy Daniels—the adult-film actor who said she had a sexual encounter with him in 2006—“Horseface.” (Trump’s effort to silence Daniels about the alleged encounter—which he has denied—resulted in his conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records; Trump is still trying to get the conviction thrown out.)

“The president of the United States is supposed to be the moral leader, the leader of the country, and he’s acting like some thug on the street,” the longtime White House reporter April Ryan, who was called “Miss Piggy” by a Trump official in 2018, told The Guardian Tuesday. “It’s one thing for his minions to say that, but for him to call a woman that? That also shows how upset he is about the Epstein files. It lets us know that there’s probably some fire there.”

The intensified scrutiny over his relationship with Epstein—and his administration’s handling of the case—has been a particular point of political vulnerability, testing his typically tight grip on his party. When ABC News’ Mary Bruce asked Trump about the matter on Tuesday, before lawmakers on Capitol Hill passed legislation calling on the Justice Department to release files related to the Epstein case, the president in turn attacked her and threatened to revoke the outlet’s broadcasting license.

“I think you are a terrible reporter,” he told Bruce in the Oval Office, where he was hosting Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince who, according to US intelligence, ordered the brutal killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. (“A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about,” Trump responded when Bruce asked an earlier question about Khashoggi, who was killed and then dismembered with a bone saw. “Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen. But he knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.”)

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Donald Trump Calling Women Pigs and More: A Brief History | Vanity Fair

#2025 #america #books #callingReporterPig #demeaning #donaldTrump #education #epsteinFiles #ericLutz #health #history #historyOfTrumpCallingWomenPigs #insulting #insults #jeffreyEpstein #libraries #library #libraryOfCongress #opinion #politics #reading #resistance #science #trump #trumpAdministration #trumpCallsWomenPigs #unitedStates #vanityFair

Jonathan Karl: The White House Chaos Is Worse This Time

Home

Jonathan Karl: The White House Chaos Is Worse This Time

By Tim Miller, and Jonathan Karl, Nov 18, 2025

The White House leaks may be more contained in Trump 2.0, but the slavish loyalists who POTUS has surrounded himself with do nothing to keep him within the bounds of the law, ethics, or decorum. So in this round, the chaos is more consequential for the country. Meanwhile, the administration may be prepping to bury the Epstein files. Plus, the bitterness and resentment that drives Trump, the war on truth is winning, and the Bidens’ animosity toward Obama.

ABC’s Jon Karl joins Tim Miller.

show notes

• Jon’s new book, “Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Jonathan Karl: The White House Chaos Is Worse This Time

#2025 #america #bulwark #chaos #donaldTrump #education #health #history #jonathanKarl #libraries #library #libraryOfCongress #opinion #politics #resistance #science #theBulwark #timMiller #trump #trumpAdministration #unitedStates #whiteHouse #worseThisTime

The queen of vampire fiction gets her New Orleans farewell – Axios New Orleans

 Oct 31, 2025 – Culture

The queen of vampire fiction gets her New Orleans farewell

• By Carlie Kollath Wells

New Orleans pays homage this weekend to author Anne Rice in two grand events for fans of the vampire novelist and the fantastical world she created.

Why it matters: It’s a delayed celebration of life for Rice, who died in 2021 when pandemic protocols prevented large gatherings.

The big picture: The fan club for her character Lestat gets the party started Friday at a formal ball.

• The 37th annual vampire ball sold out in seven minutes, says co-host and French Quarter resident Alys Arden.
• Arden, who also writes about vampires and witches in New Orleans, has attended for years with several hundred other revelers. They often dress as Rice’s characters.
• “We’re really trying to make it feel like you walked into her world and that there’s an element of her words throughout the night,” Arden tells Axios in an exclusive interview.

The next day: Anne Rice’s son, Christopher, and her longtime friend, Eric Shaw Quinn, host the main fan event Saturday at The Orpheum.

• It will be an immersive stage spectacle with musical performances, a recreation of her gardens and interviews with her family and colleagues.
• It explores how she turned the worst thing that ever happened to her — the death of her daughter — into the best thing, Christopher Rice tells Axios in an exclusive interview.
• “The genesis of her entire success was this terrible loss that she transformed into this world and invited all of these people in,” he says.

What he’s saying: “I want them to feel inspired,” he says of Saturday’s event, while also having moments to feel their grief about the loss of the author.

State of play: Anne Rice grew up in New Orleans and lived in the Garden District for years.

• The New York Times “trashed” “Interview with the Vampire” when it came out in 1976, Christopher Rice says, but his mom kept at it.
• “The idea of taking dark fantasy seriously as a serious literary genre in which you could talk about the human condition — that was not popular when she was doing it,” he says.
• She pioneered the technique of writing about vampires — the so-called villains — from their point of view, Quinn says. She published more than 35 books and sold more than 150 million copies.

Zoom in: A new generation of fans is being introduced to her work through AMC’s “Anne Rice Immortal Universe” television series.

• “Talamasca” premiered this week and tells the story of the secret society mentioned in her books.
• “Interview with the Vampire” and “Mayfair Witches” both have two seasons available for streaming. They were filmed in New Orleans.
• Anne Rice and Christopher Rice are executive producers on the shows, the network confirmed.

The intrigue: Rice and Quinn teased new projects, including the possibility of new books. Christopher Rice wrote several books with his mother and says she left behind unfinished material.

Plus, they say they “salivate” over the idea of “Ramses the Damned” projects.

Fans often ask for more “Wolf Gift” books as well, the two business partners say.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: The queen of vampire fiction gets her New Orleans farewell – Axios New Orleans

#2025 #America #AnneRice #Axios #AxiosNewOrleans #Books #Education #Films #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Movies #NewOrleans #NewOrleansFarewell #Opinion #Queen #Reading #UnitedStates #VampireFiction #Writing

Supreme Court has empowered Trump. How much further will it go? – The Washington Post

Supreme Court has expanded presidential powers under Trump. How far will it go?

The justices will hear arguments Wednesday on the legality of most of the president’s tariffs — the first in a series of tests of sweeping claims of authority.

November 2, 2025 at 8:36 a.m. EST, Today at 8:36 a.m. EST, 10 min

By Justin Jouvenal

For nine months, in a flood of emergency orders, the Supreme Court has allowed President Donald Trump to expand his power.

The justices have permitted Trump to slash the federal bureaucracy, fire the heads of nominally independent agencies and exercise powers traditionally ascribed to Congress.

How much further will the court go?

That will be the overriding question Wednesday when the court hears arguments on the legality of most of the president’s tariffs — the first case to reach the justices in a series of high-stakes tests of Trump’ssweeping claimsof authority.

His asserted tariff powers are uniquely dear to Trump, who has repeatedly warned of economic devastation if the court were to rule against one of his signature policies. But the other tests of presidential power could also have major impact.

In November, the court will considerwhether to strike down a 90-year-old precedent that insulates independent agencies from White House interference. In January, it will explore whether Trump can remake the Federal Reserve, with its vast powers over the economy.

Taken together, the cases will determine the extent to which the Supreme Court will embrace Trump’s view of a presidency constrained by few checks and wielding the type of authority typically only seen in times of war or national crisis. Decisions are expected in the cases by the summer.

“I think the court so far has been more deferential to President Trump than most Supreme Courts in modern times,” said Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University. “It’s very hard to point to a significant way in which the court has said ‘stop’ to the White House. It raises the pressure on the court, and it raises the stakes for the term ahead.”

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement the high court’s rulings have corrected erroneous decisions by “far-left liberal activist judges” and thatthe president is doing what he was elected to do.

“The President will continue implementing the policy agenda that the American people voted for in November and will continue to be vindicated by higher courts when liberal activist judges attempt to intervene,” Jackson said.

Trump’s claim that he can unilaterally impose massive tariffs, a cornerstone of his economic agenda, is among his most aggressive moves to date. His assertion rests on a 1977 law that grants the president emergency powers to regulate international commerce. Trump’s argument that the law can be used for tariffs is one no other president has made in the statute’s 50-year history.

The administration has asked the justices to overturn federal court rulings that found the law did not convey authority to impose tariffs. Trump said the levies, some of which he announced at an event he dubbed “Liberation Day,” will help stem the flow of fentanyl across the border and restore America’s manufacturing base.

Small businesses and states have sued to block the levies, arguing they will cause widespread economic harm.

Arguably, no institution has set the stage for Trump’s efforts to expand his poweras much as the Supreme Court and in particular its chief justice. John G. Roberts Jr. has written decisions in recent years declaring the president a uniquely powerful figure.

In a 2020 ruling, Roberts wrote the “entire ‘executive Power’ belongs to the President alone.” He has also intimated the president should have a free hand to fire low-level government employees and made it easier for the president to remove the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Supreme Court has empowered Trump. How much further will it go? – The Washington Post

#2025 #America #ChiefJustice #ConservativeMajority #DonaldTrump #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Roberts #SCOTUS #SupremeCourtOfTheUnitedStates #TheWashingtonPost #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UncheckedPower #UnitedStates

Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian Is Creating a Digital Archive of Exhibits – School Library Journal

Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian Is Creating a Digital Archive of Exhibits

by Kara Yorio, Oct 03, 2025 | Filed in News & Features

The all-volunteer initiative is documenting exhibits at the more than 20 Smithsonian Institution museums and the National Zoo in response to the Trump administration’s announcement that museums’ contents would be subject to review and revision to align with the president’s directive.

When retired Virginia school librarian Mary Anne O’Rourke learned about a project to digitally archive the Smithsonian Institution museums, she immediately wanted to volunteer.

“I spent my career teaching children how to research and look up facts, how to know facts from distortions, and what were good sources? The Smithsonian has been our greatest source,” says O’Rourke, who was a preK–8 librarian for 11 years after being a classroom teacher and working at the Smithsonian Visitor Information Center.

Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian is an all-volunteer effort to document everything on display at the Smithsonian’s 21 museums, the National Zoo, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Volunteers take photos and videos of exhibits in this crowdsourced archiving endeavor. Organizers call it “Crowd to Cloud” and plan to make the information accessible to the media and public.

The initiative is a response to an August letter sent by the Trump administration to the Smithsonian Institution secretary stating that exhibits were subject to review and revision in an effort to “reflect the unity, progress, and enduring values that define the American story.” The letter went on to say it was an effort to “ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives.”

After learning of the administration’s intentions, Georgetown University history professors Chandra Manning and James A. Millward wanted to take action. Inspired by Save Our Signs—which seeks to document signs and information at National Parks that may be removed by the administration—Manning and Millward sent an email to the university’s history department saying they wanted to find a way to document the Smithsonian exhibits. Upon receiving the email, Jessica Dickinson Goodman, a graduate research assistant at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, immediately proposed possible ways of achieving the goal and offered to help coordinate. Not only is the dual master’s student pursuing a degree in Global, International, and Comparative History, the Smithsonian also holds a special place in her personal history.

“When I was in college, my partner and I were long distance, and we would meet up every other weekend in D.C. and go to the Smithsonian,” Dickinson Goodman says. “They are very personal to me. They’re a big part of my sense of my country, and my sense of my field, and my sense of pride in what it means to be an American—that we can produce these amazing free institutions to the public and to the world. And these institutions hold within them a huge amount of human wisdom and American and world experience that deserve to be accessible.”

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

https://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/story/Citizen-Historians-Smithsonian-creating-digital-Archive-Exhibits

#2025 #America #CitizenHistorians #DigitalArchive #DonaldTrump #Education #Exhibits #Health #History #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #SchoolLibraryJournal #Science #SLJ #Smithsonian #SmithsonianInstitution #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Exclusive: ex-CDC director talks about why she was fired – Nature

“I would never do that, as a scientist,” Susan Monarez says of being asked to approve changes to vaccine recommendations without knowing the details.

When Susan Monarez took the helm of the beleaguered US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in late July, she had her work cut out for her. Public trust in the agency had dropped considerably since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. And US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who oversees the CDC, had called the agency a “cesspool of corruption” that needed to be fundamentally rebuilt.

Less than a month into Monarez’s tenure, US President Donald Trump fired her. She had lost the trust of Kennedy, who only a month earlier had said he had “full confidence” in her ability to lead the agency and that she had “unimpeachable scientific credentials”.

This conflict spilled into public view when each presented their version of events to US senators at separate hearings on Capitol Hill in Washington DC. Monarez was dismissed, she said, for refusing to fire top scientists at the agency or pre-approve vaccine recommendations without first considering the relevant scientific data. Kennedy testified that Monarez had told him that she wasn’t trustworthy, so he ousted her.

Kennedy had also told Monarez that CDC employees were “killing children and they don’t care”, were “bought by the pharmaceutical industry” and “forced people to wear masks and social distance like a dictatorship”, she testified. These alleged comments came after a deadly shooting at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, soon after she became director. The gunman, who targeted the campus to protest COVID-19 vaccines, killed police officer David Rose and shattered some 150 windows.

The past few months, Monarez says, have included both “the highlights of my professional career” and the “absolute worst days of my life”. In an exclusive interview — her first since she became CDC director — she tells Nature about the consequential decisions that cost her the job and what’s next for public health in a politicized world.

The CDC director is an “inherently political position, but that doesn’t mean that it has to be politically compromised”, says Monarez, who is an immunologist and microbiologist. “The CDC is far too important to just give up on.”

Before our call, you sent me a photo that seems to be of you as a child with your father and siblings sitting on a tractor with a barn in the background. What was that about?

I grew up in rural America, in a family that didn’t have many resources — my dad was a dairy farmer. You live without expecting to have the privileges and material possessions that so many people have. We just knew that you worked hard. You got up early and you treated people with kindness. We lived at or below the poverty line for a long time.

My parents, they’re still alive, thankfully. But they’ve never been wealthy, and they don’t have the advantages of immediate access to high-quality health care, and so I see them still struggling today. When we’re talking in Washington DC, we have to remember that there are millions and millions of Americans like my parents. We can’t leave them behind.

Editor’s Note: The featured image was created by SORA. WP AI refused to make an image based on the article; seems likely just censorship, I wonder. –DrWeb

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Exclusive: ex-CDC director talks about why she was fired

#2025 #America #CDC #CentersForDiseaseControlAndPrevention #Coronavirus #COVID19 #DonaldTrump #Education #Fired #Health #History #JFKJunior #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Nature #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #Technology #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Inside the Battle for The Smithsonian – Vanity Fair

CULTURE WAR

Inside the Battle for The Smithsonian

Donald Trump’s unprecedented measures to take control of The Smithsonian Institution have rattled staffers, enraged artists, and even put the future of its vast collection in doubt.

By Manuel Roig-Franzia, September 29, 2025

The look on the curator’s face said it all, and the intensity of the conversation was escalating by the moment. Confusion to worry. Worry to dread.

“I want to do this,” the curator said. “But I don’t think I can do this. I’m worried that I might get in trouble.”

On any other day, the curator’s sit-down with a high-ranking Smithsonian official about an exhibition plan would have been routine—the idea wasn’t particularly controversial. But not on this day in late March. President Donald Trump’s White House had just issued an executive order, a mere 1,100 words or so but plenty enough to shake the world’s largest museum and research institution to its core, a document titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”

The order lambasted The Smithsonian, saying it had “in recent years come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology. This shift has promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.” It went on to order Vice President JD Vance, who sits on the Smithsonian Board of Regents, to seek out and “remove improper ideology” and to take a hand in reshaping content at the popular 21-museum complex as well as its research centers and the National Zoo. The Trump administration, the order said, would work to ensure The Smithsonian would transmit an “uplifting” message to remind “Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing.”

The order felt almost Orwellian to some.

“It taps into people’s basest fears,” a high-ranking official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns about retribution, told me.

Across the breadth of the vast Smithsonian network, similar reactions were taking place. Officials were beginning to doubt their decisions. Might they be self-editing to appease a vengeful president? Might self-editing morph into self-sabotage? Might The Smithsonian, which gets a large percentage of its budget from the federal government but prides itself on independence, become a political propaganda tool?

“The whole thing is fucked up,” said artist Mika Rottenberg, whose work will be featured at The Smithsonian in November. “So many things are fucked up.”

Continue/Read Original Article: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/inside-the-battle-for-the-smithsonian

#2025 #America #Battle #Censorship #DonaldTrump #Education #EraseHistory #Health #History #InsideSmithsonian #KennedyCenter #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #RemoveHistory #Resistance #Science #Smithsonian #SmithsonianInstitution #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates #VanityFair

Opinion | Rail trails offer space to reconnect with community – The Washington Post

Opinion

Meet us on the rail trail

A place to gather as Americans, not partisans.The Island Line Trail on the Burlington, Vermont, waterfront, which Howard Dean played a role in creating. (Courtesy From Rails to Trails Film, LLC)

By Tommy Thompson and Howard Dean – Tommy Thompson, a Republican, is a former governor of Wisconsin. Howard Dean, a Democrat, is a former governor of Vermont.

September 28, 2025 at 7:00 a.m. EDT, Yesterday at 7:00 a.m. EDT, 3 min

Life in much of America today seems fractured, offering fewer opportunities for people to meet, mingle and feel part of the same community. But there is at least one exception: local rail trails — quiet, leafy greenways that follow the paths trains once traveled.

Over the past six decades, a citizen-led movement has transformed more than 26,000 miles of abandoned rail corridors into thousands of public paths for walking, biking and recreation. Tens of millions of people use these trails each year — in the countryside, in small towns and in big cities. This successful effort to convert rails to trails has never belonged to just one political party.

We know this because we’ve lived it; rail trails have been important to both our lives. One of us (Thompson) grew up along the nation’s first rail trail: the Elroy-Sparta State Trail in Wisconsin, which ran through his family farm. The other (Dean) helped create the Island Line Trail in Vermont, which swings from Burlington out onto a causeway far into Lake Champlain.

It was Thompson’s father who helped bring the Elroy-Sparta trail to life, setting in motion a project that revived local communities and became a model for the nation. And it was Dean whose leadership helped secure a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that validated the concept of saving rail corridors.

These trails do more than repurpose land. They restore communities. They promote health, tourism and local business. They give Americans a place to meet as neighbors, not partisans.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Opinion | Rail trails offer space to reconnect with community – Washington Post

#2025 #America #Biking #community #Education #Health #History #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #OpenSpaces #Opinion #PublicPaths #RailTrails #Railroads #Rails #Reconnect #Recreation #Science #TheWashingtonPost #Travel #UnitedStates #Walking

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.: The Architect of Conservative Jurisprudence – A Special SCOTUS Series

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.: The Architect of Conservative Jurisprudence – Here’s a look at our Chief Justice, his life, background, and how he influences our legal challenges, legal issues, from his conservative views. This report was prepared by Perplexity Pro, and edited by DrWeb.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.: The Architect of Conservative Jurisprudence

John Glover Roberts Jr. has served as the 17th Chief Justice of the United States since September 29, 2005, presiding over one of the most transformative periods in Supreme Court history. As the youngest chief justice in over a century at age 50, Roberts has authored landmark conservative decisions while attempting to balance institutional preservation with ideological advancement over his two decades of leadership.

Early Life and Formation

Born on January 27, 1955, in Buffalo, New York, Roberts was the second of four children to John (Jack) G. Roberts Sr., a Bethlehem Steel Corporation executive, and Rosemary Roberts (née Podrasky). The family’s Catholic faith would prove formative, as would their move to Long Beach, Indiana, in the early 1960s when Roberts Sr. received a promotion to work at a new steel plant.

Roberts excelled academically from an early age, graduating first in his class from La Lumiere School, a Catholic boarding school in Indiana, where he also captained the football team. To help pay for college, he worked summers in a steel mill, an experience that grounded him in working-class values despite his later elite academic trajectory. His early ambition was to become a historian, reflecting an intellectual curiosity that would later influence his judicial approach to constitutional interpretation.

Academic Excellence and Early Career

Roberts completed his undergraduate degree at Harvard University in just three years, graduating summa cum laude in 1976 with a major in history. He remained at Harvard for law school, where he served as managing editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude in 1979. These academic achievements established him as one of the brightest legal minds of his generation.

Following law school, Roberts secured two prestigious federal clerkships that would shape his career trajectory. From 1979-1980, he clerked for Judge Henry J. Friendly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, one of the most respected federal judges of his era. He then clerked for Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist during the 1980 term, establishing a mentorship that would profoundly influence his judicial philosophy.

Government Service and Private Practice

Roberts’s early career alternated between high-level government service and elite private practice. From 1981-1982, he served as Special Assistant to Attorney General William French Smith, then moved to the White House as Associate Counsel to President Ronald Reagan from 1982-1986. During this period, he helped craft conservative legal positions that would later inform his judicial decisions, including memoranda expressing skepticism about discrimination remedies and civil rights enforcement.

In 1986, Roberts joined the prestigious law firm Hogan & Hartson as an associate, becoming a partner within a year. His appellate practice was extraordinarily successful, focusing on Supreme Court litigation and complex constitutional issues. From 1989-1993, he returned to government as Principal Deputy Solicitor General, the second-in-command in the Office of the Solicitor General, where he argued numerous cases before the Supreme Court.

Marriage and Family Life

Roberts married Jane Marie Sullivan in 1996, a fellow attorney and Harvard Law School graduate whom he met during his government service. The couple has two adopted children, Josephine and John, and their family life reflects Roberts’s commitment to balancing professional demands with personal relationships. Jane Roberts has maintained her own successful legal career, though she has faced scrutiny for potential conflicts of interest related to her legal recruiting work while her husband serves on the Court.

Path to the Supreme Court

President George H.W. Bush first nominated Roberts to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1992 when he was just 37, but the Democratic-controlled Senate never held a confirmation vote. Roberts returned to private practice during the Clinton years, also teaching at Georgetown University Law Center.

In 2001, President George W. Bush renominated Roberts to the D.C. Circuit, and he was finally confirmed in May 2003. During his brief two-year tenure on the appeals court, Roberts wrote approximately 50 opinions that demonstrated his conservative judicial philosophy and exceptional legal craftsmanship.

Bush initially nominated Roberts in July 2005 to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, but when Chief Justice Rehnquist died in September, Bush elevated the nomination to Chief Justice. Roberts’s confirmation hearings featured his famous “umpire” analogy: “Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules, they apply them… I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.” The Senate confirmed him by a vote of 78-22 on September 29, 2005.

Judicial Philosophy and Constitutional Interpretation

Roberts advocates for judicial restraint, originalism, and textualism in constitutional interpretation. He believes judges should apply law neutrally rather than engage in creative lawmaking, though critics argue his major decisions have often advanced conservative policy goals. His approach combines respect for precedent with willingness to overturn liberal rulings he views as constitutionally flawed.

As Chief Justice, Roberts has consistently emphasized institutional integrity and incremental change over revolutionary jurisprudence. However, his leadership has coincided with the most conservative Supreme Court in nearly a century, creating tension between his institutionalist instincts and ideological objectives.

Major Opinions and Legal Impact

Healthcare and Federal Power

Roberts authored the pivotal decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (2012), upholding the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate as a constitutional tax. This decision surprised conservatives but demonstrated Roberts’s complex approach to federal power and his occasional willingness to break with conservative orthodoxy to preserve institutional legitimacy.

Civil Rights and Voting

In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), Roberts authored the majority opinion striking down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, arguing that federal oversight of state voting laws was no longer necessary. This decision enabled numerous states to implement voting restrictions, fundamentally altering American voting rights protections.

Presidential Power

Roberts has authored several opinions expanding executive authority, including Trump v. Hawaii (2018) upholding the Muslim travel ban and Trump v. United States (2024) establishing broad presidential immunity from criminal prosecution. These decisions reflect his deference to executive power in areas of national security and foreign policy.

Race and Education

Roberts authored Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), ending race-based college admissions programs nationwide. This decision fulfilled a long-standing conservative goal and demonstrated Roberts’s willingness to overturn decades of precedent when advancing originalist constitutional interpretation.

Leadership Style and Court Dynamics

As Chief Justice, Roberts assigns majority opinions when he votes with the majority, a power he has used strategically to shape legal doctrine and maintain control over controversial decisions. His leadership style emphasizes consensus-building and narrow rulings, though the Court’s 6-3 conservative majority has enabled broader conservative decisions than Roberts might prefer.

Roberts has presided over significant constitutional developments including marriage equality, religious liberty expansions, Second Amendment jurisprudence, and abortion rights. He also presided over President Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2020, maintaining judicial decorum during highly partisan proceedings.

The Roberts-Barrett Partnership: Mentorship and Judicial Alliance

A defining aspect of Roberts’s tenure has been his evolving relationship with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whom he has cultivated as a key ally in advancing conservative jurisprudence while maintaining institutional credibility. Since Barrett joined the Court in 2020, Roberts has strategically assigned her significant majority opinions, including the landmark Trump v. CASA decision that expanded executive power while limiting federal court authority to issue nationwide injunctions.

Roberts’s mentorship of Barrett reflects both personal and strategic considerations. Early in her tenure, he assigned her a complex property rights case where she initially drafted a majority opinion but later changed positions—a bold move that could have antagonized the Chief Justice but instead demonstrated her independent judicial thinking. Rather than penalizing this judicial evolution, Roberts has continued to entrust Barrett with increasingly important assignments, including cases involving Native American rights and religious liberty.

Barrett’s judicial philosophy closely mirrors Roberts’s own approach to constitutional interpretation. Both justices embrace originalism and textualism, seeking to interpret constitutional and statutory language according to its original public meaning rather than evolving contemporary understanding. Like Roberts, Barrett demonstrates judicial restraint and institutionalist concerns, often preferring narrow rulings over sweeping constitutional pronouncements. Their shared commitment to incremental conservative change has made them frequent collaborators in cases where Roberts needs a reliable fifth or sixth vote for majority coalitions.

The Chief Justice appears particularly attentive to Barrett’s contributions during oral arguments and conference discussions, recognizing her potential as a swing vote who can attract liberal justices to conservative positions. In several high-profile cases, Roberts and Barrett have joined with liberal justices to constrain Trump administration overreach, demonstrating their shared concern for judicial independence and separation of powers. This partnership has frustrated some conservatives who expected Barrett to be more ideologically rigid, but it has enhanced Roberts’s ability to control controversial decisions and maintain Court legitimacy while still advancing conservative legal principles.

Legacy and Long-Term Impact

After twenty years as Chief Justice, Roberts has fundamentally transformed American constitutional law through conservative jurisprudence while maintaining the Court’s basic institutional framework. His tenure has seen the steady advancement of originalist constitutional interpretation, limited federal regulatory power, expanded religious liberty protections, and strengthened executive authority.

Critics argue that Roberts has enabled a “constitutional revolution” that contradicts his stated commitment to incremental change and judicial restraint. Supporters contend he has restored constitutional text and original meaning to Supreme Court jurisprudence while preserving essential democratic institutions.

Roberts continues to navigate the tension between conservative legal advancement and institutional preservation as he enters his third decade of service. His ultimate legacy will depend on whether his leadership produces lasting constitutional change or triggers backlash that undermines judicial authority. As both the youngest Chief Justice in over a century and one of the longest-serving, Roberts’s influence on American law will extend far beyond his eventual retirement.

Bibliography and Sources

Primary Sources:

• Current Members. Supreme Court of the United States. July 12, 2017.
• 2024 Year End Report on the Federal Judiciary. Supreme Court of the United States. 2024.

Government and Institutional Sources:

• Judicial Nominations – Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. George W. Bush White House Archives. August 7, 2008.
• Roberts, John Glover, Jr. Federal Judicial Center. June 29, 2022.
• John G. Roberts, Jr. Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law.
• Chief Justice John Roberts. Justia Supreme Court Center. September 28, 2005.

Academic and Scholarly Sources:

• Biography and Judicial Philosophy of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Seton Hall University Scholarship.
• Chief Justice John Roberts and the Combination of Conservatism and Institutionalism. Illinois Law Review. August 30, 2023.
• The Philosophy and Jurisprudence of Chief Justice Roberts. University of Utah College of Law.
• The Judicial Philosophy of Chief Justice John Roberts. Emory International Law Review. February 3, 2021.
• In the Balance: Law and Politics on the Roberts Court. William & Mary Law School.
• “In Search of Justice: An Examination of the Appointments of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito”. William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal. April 22, 2014.
• Federalism Rebalancing and the Roberts Court. Harvard Law Review. May 1, 2025.

News and Analysis Sources:

• John G. Roberts, Jr. | Biography, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Britannica. August 14, 2025.
• The Current Court: Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. Supreme Court Historical Society. March 27, 2022.
• In 20 years under John Roberts, a dramatic rightward turn for the US Supreme Court. Reuters. September 8, 2025.
• This Is the Presidency John Roberts Has Built. The Atlantic. July 21, 2025.
• The Life and Turbulent Times of Chief Justice John Roberts. Aspen Ideas Festival. August 19, 2025.
• Understanding John Roberts: A Conservative Institutionalist. JURIST. July 30, 2020.

Roberts-Barrett Relationship Sources:

• Initially wary of Trump, Roberts and Barrett offer the former president a victory. CNN. June 28, 2025.
• The behind-the-scenes power John Roberts wields to shape Supreme Court decisions. CNN. July 2, 2025.
• Amy Coney Barrett Is The Most Interesting Justice On The Court. Original Jurisdiction (Substack). July 2, 2025.
• Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts Become a Thorn in Trump’s Side. Newsweek. March 6, 2025.
• Amy Coney Barrett’s Biggest Supreme Court Allies Revealed. Newsweek. July 15, 2025.
• Supreme Court’s Roberts turns court to the right as Barrett becomes influential. NPR. July 1, 2024.
• How Amy Coney Barrett Is Confounding the Right and the Left. The New York Times. June 15, 2025.
• Opinion | Trump resistance needs Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts. The Washington Post. March 27, 2025.
• Closing the book on the term. SCOTUSblog. June 30, 2025.
• Amy Coney Barrett. Wikipedia. May 7, 2017.

#2025 #America #AmyConeyBarrett #ChiefJustice #Conservative #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #JohnRoberts #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #RightWingConservative #Science #SupremeCourt #Trump #TrumpAdministration #USSupremeCourt #UnitedStates

A Tribute to Patrick Hemingway with Sandra Spanier | The Hemingway Society

 The Hemingway Society

A Tribute to Patrick Hemingway with Sandra Spanier

Share on Facebook, Share on Twitter, Share on LinkedIn, Subscribe with Apple Podcasts, Subscribe with RSS, Download this episode

Listen to the podcast, also on many podcast platforms.

September 10, 2025

At One True Podcast we were sad to hear of the death of Patrick Hemingway, the middle son of Ernest, who died on September 2, 2025. Patrick Hemingway (1928-2025) lived a life that was truly Hemingwayesque: traveling like his father, living much of his life in Africa, hunting and fishing, and determined to maintain the legacy of his father’s literary work. 

We invited Sandra Spanier, General Editor of the Hemingway Letters Project, to share her memories of Patrick, including his contributions to the Letters Project, her visits with him, and a poignant interview with Patrick that was conducted just a few months ago. Our episode closes with a soundbite from that June 2025 interview.

We hope you enjoy this immediate reaction to the sad news of Patrick’s passing.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: A Tribute to Patrick Hemingway with Sandra Spanier | The Hemingway Society

#2025 #Books #Death #Education #ErnestHemingway #HemingwaySociety #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Obituary #OneTruePodcast #Passing #PatrickHemingway #Reading #September2 #Son #UnitedStates

Democratic senators urge Smithsonian to resist White House attempts to ‘bully the institution’ : NPR

Culture

Four Democratic senators urge Smithsonian to resist White House attempts to ‘bully the institution’

Updated September 5, 2025, 3:32 PM ET

By Anastasia Tsioulcas

In a letter sent Friday to the Smithsonian Institution’s secretary, Lonnie G. Bunch, Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., and three other Democratic senators urged Bunch to resist any attempts by the White House to “bully the institution to go against its mission and values.”

The letter from the four Senate Democrats comes weeks after President Trump called the Smithsonian and museums “all over the Country essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE.’” On Truth Social, he said that the Smithsonian presents a narrative of the country’s history that is about “how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”

The White House also released an unsigned memo last month specifically criticizing 22 exhibitions, live programs and other materials at the Smithsonian, titled, “President Trump Is Right About The Smithsonian.” NPR has reported that some of the exhibitions were temporary and are no longer on view.

The coauthors of Friday’s letter are three senators with ties to the institution: Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., and Gary Peters, D-Mich., both current members of the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents; and Sen. Jeffrey A. Merkley, D-Ore., the ranking member of an appropriations subcommittee which holds jurisdiction over the Smithsonian’s federal funding. The letter was provided to NPR by Padilla’s office.

Within the letter, the senators asserted that oversight of the Smithsonian rests with Congress from its founding, not the White House.

“As you know,” the senators wrote in part, “the Smithsonian Institution is a national treasure, and it is also a public-private partnership managed as an independent federal trust. It is not an executive agency over which the President can exert unilateral control over its historical, scientific or artistic content. The Institution was created by Congress to care for the bequest of James Smithson and to found ‘an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.’ In recent years, it has been funded with a relatively even split of private donations to support its programming, and federal appropriations provided by Congress to support its core operations including the maintenance of the facilities, further underscoring its unique status.”

The letter continued: “Congress assigned the trust responsibility for this gift of private property to the United States and its ongoing mission to the Smithsonian Board of Regents, not to the executive branch.”

In a written statement sent to NPR on Friday afternoon, Lindsey Halligan, a White House official tasked with reviewing the Smithsonian, said: “The Smithsonian is not an autonomous institution, as 70% of its funding comes from taxpayers. While we acknowledge the Smithsonian’s recognition of its own programmatic failures and is moving toward critical introspection, it cannot credibly audit itself. By definition, an ‘audit’ must be neutral and objective. The American taxpayers deserve nothing less, which is why the White House will ensure the audit is conducted impartially. This is non-negotiable.”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Democratic senators urge Smithsonian to resist White House attempts to ‘bully the institution’ : NPR

#2025 #America #bullying #Democrats #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #NationalPublicRadio #NPR #Opinion #Politics #Resist #Resistance #Science #Senators #SmithsonianInstitution #SmithsonianMuseums #SupportSmithsonian #Technology #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates #WhiteHouse

Smithsonian secretary reaffirms institution’s ‘independence’ in response to White House’s demand for review – ABC News

Smithsonian secretary reaffirms institution’s ‘independence’ in response to White House’s demand for review

Sec. Lonnie Bunch said that the institution’s “independence is paramount.”

By Elizabeth Thomas and Deena Zaru, September 5, 2025, 12:31 PM

White House wants Smithsonian exhibits to fit Trump’s view of history: Official
The White House plans to conduct a wide-ranging review of the Smithsonian Institution’s museum exhibitions, materials and operations ahead of America’s 250th anniversary.

Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch III asserted the Smithsonian Institution’s control over its programming and content this week in a letter addressed to the White House after the Trump administration demanded a review of the institution’s exhibits, a Smithsonian official confirmed to ABC News.

The White House announced last month that it plans to conduct a wide-ranging review of the Smithsonian’s museum exhibitions, materials and operations to ensure they align with President Donald Trump’s view of American history.

In the Sept. 3 letter, Bunch responded to Trump’s demand that his administration review the Smithsonian’s exhibitions, materials and operations. It also said that the Smithsonian, which is the world’s largest museum complex, will remain control over programming and content and that it will do its own review of exhibits, material and operations, the official told ABC News.

Following its internal review, Bunch said he will brief the White House on its findings, but the Smithsonian will not be sending a formal report to the White House, the Smithsonian official added. The museum’s review of exhibits is expected to be complete by the end of the year.

Asked about the Smithsonian’s internal review and whether the White House will insist on being involved, a White House official told ABC News that the Smithsonian “cannot credibly audit itself.”

“The Smithsonian is not an autonomous institution, as 70% of its funding comes from taxpayers. While we acknowledge the Smithsonian’s recognition of its own programmatic failures and is moving toward critical introspection, it cannot credibly audit itself,” White House official Lindsey Halligan said. “By definition, an ‘audit’ must be neutral and objective. The American taxpayers deserve nothing less, which is why the White House will ensure the audit is conducted impartially. This is non-negotiable.”

ABC News reached out to the Smithsonian but a request for comment was not immediately returned.

Bunch, who met with Trump at the White House on Aug. 28 over lunch, referenced the Smithsonian’s response to the White House and his conversations with Trump during the lunch in a Sept. 3 letter to the institution’s employees, which was obtained by ABC News.

In the letter, Bunch told Smithsonian employees that he communicated to the president during their Aug. 28 meeting that the Smithsonian’s “independence is paramount.” He also told employees that the Institution remains committed to telling the “American story” and “will always be, a place that welcomes all Americans and the world.”

Asked about the Smithsonian’s internal review and whether the White House will insist on being involved, a White House official told ABC News that the Smithsonian “cannot credibly audit itself.”

“The Smithsonian is not an autonomous institution, as 70% of its funding comes from taxpayers. While we acknowledge the Smithsonian’s recognition of its own programmatic failures and is moving toward critical introspection, it cannot credibly audit itself,” White House official Lindsey Halligan said. “By definition, an ‘audit’ must be neutral and objective. The American taxpayers deserve nothing less, which is why the White House will ensure the audit is conducted impartially. This is non-negotiable.”

ABC News reached out to the Smithsonian but a request for comment was not immediately returned.

Bunch, who met with Trump at the White House on Aug. 28 over lunch, referenced the Smithsonian’s response to the White House and his conversations with Trump during the lunch in a Sept. 3 letter to the institution’s employees, which was obtained by ABC News.

In the letter, Bunch told Smithsonian employees that he communicated to the president during their Aug. 28 meeting that the Smithsonian’s “independence is paramount.” He also told employees that the Institution remains committed to telling the “American story” and “will always be, a place that welcomes all Americans and the world.”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Smithsonian secretary reaffirms institution’s ‘independence’ in response to White House’s demand for review – ABC News

#2025 #ABCNews #America #Books #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Reading #Resistance #Science #SecretaryLonnieBunch #SmithsonianInstitution #SmithsonianMuseums #Technology #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates #WashingtonDC #WhiteHouse

The Last Days of the U.S. Department of War

The Last Days of the U.S. Department of War

Introduction

For more than 150 years, the Department of War stood at the center of America’s military organization. Established in 1789 alongside the early departments of State and Treasury, it managed the Army, coordinated defense policy, and shaped much of the nation’s military history. But after World War II, sweeping reforms in defense and foreign policy led to its replacement by a new structure. Here’s the story of the last day the United States officially had a Department of War — and how it became today’s Department of Defense.

The Final Day: September 17, 1947

The turning point came with the National Security Act of 1947. This landmark legislation reorganized the armed forces, intelligence, and defense establishment to meet Cold War realities. It did three major things:

• Retitled the Department of War as the Department of the Army.
• Created a separate Department of the Air Force.
• Placed the Army, Navy, and Air Force together under a new civilian authority called the National Military Establishment (NME), headed by a Secretary of Defense.

The law’s effective-date clause specified that these changes would take effect the day after the first Secretary of Defense was sworn in. When James V. Forrestal took the oath on September 17, 1947, the War Department ceased to exist. From September 18, 1947 onward, the Department of War was history.

“The provisions of this Act shall take effect … the day after the day upon which the Secretary of Defense first appointed takes office.”
— National Security Act of 1947, Sec. 310

From National Military Establishment to Department of Defense

The 1947 Act was only the beginning. Within two years, Congress decided that the National Military Establishment was too weak and fragmented. To strengthen civilian control, it passed the National Security Act Amendments of 1949. On August 10, 1949, President Harry S. Truman signed the bill, which:

• Abolished the “National Military Establishment” name.
• Elevated the Secretary of Defense’s role.
• Renamed the entire structure as the Department of Defense (DoD).

“It converts the National Military Establishment into a new executive Department of Defense…”
— President Harry S. Truman, August 10, 1949

Conclusion

The Department of War’s last day was September 17, 1947, when James Forrestal was sworn in as the first Secretary of Defense. The following day, the department’s name and structure formally changed, marking the end of an era that had lasted since the nation’s founding. Two years later, the Department of Defense name we know today was born, reflecting the new strategic realities of the Cold War.

This transformation symbolized more than just a change in titles — it represented America’s shift from a traditional, wartime footing to a permanent, modernized defense establishment.

Sources

• National Security Act of 1947 (Public Law 80-253), compiled text. govinfo.gov PDF
• Office of the Secretary of Defense Historical Office. James V. Forrestal sworn in as first Secretary of Defense, Sept. 17, 1947. history.defense.gov
• Truman Presidential Library. Statement by the President Upon Signing the National Security Act Amendments of 1949. August 10, 1949. trumanlibrary.gov
• U.S. Department of Defense, Historical Timeline. defense.gov

Editor’s Note: Prepared for DrWeb’s Domain by ChatGPT 5, and edited by DrWeb.

#2025 #AI #America #Books #ChatGPT #DonaldTrump #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #MilitaryHistory #NationalSecurityActOf1947 #Opinion #Politics #PresidentTruman #Reading #Resistance #Science #Technology #Trump #TrumpAdministration #USDepartmentOfDefense #USDepartmentOfWar #UnitedStates

Scientists Denounce Trump Administration’s Climate Report – The New York Times

Scientists Denounce Trump Administration’s Climate Report

Scores of researchers reviewed the Energy Department’s argument about greenhouse gases and found serious deficiencies.

By Lisa Friedman and Sachi Kitajima Mulkey

More than 85 American and international scientists have condemned a Trump administration report that calls the threat of climate change overblown, saying the analysis is riddled with errors, misrepresentations and cherry-picked data to fit the president’s political agenda.

The scientists submitted their critique as part of a public comment period on the report, which was to close Tuesday night. 

“No one should doubt that human-caused climate change is real, is already producing potentially dangerous impacts, and that humanity is on track for a geologically enormous amount of warming,” the scientists wrote. They compared the administration’s report to efforts by the tobacco industry to create doubt around the health links between smoking and cancer.

The five researchers who prepared the administration’s July report were handpicked by Chris Wright, the energy secretary, and they all reject the established scientific consensus that the burning of oil, gas and coal is dangerously heating the planet. They acknowledged that the Earth is warming but said that climate change is “less damaging economically than commonly believed.”

The administration used the report to justify its recent announcement that it would repeal limits on greenhouse gas emissions that stem from burning fossil fuels.

Mr. Wright has accused the report’s critics of avoiding a robust discussion of the science.

“People had been much less willing than I had hoped to engage in a thoughtful dialogue on climate change,” he said in a recent interview. “This is fundamentally a story about something that’s a real physical phenomenon that’s scientifically complicated. It’s a scientific, economic issue and people treat it too often as a religious issue.”

The Energy Department declined to comment on the criticisms from scientists about the report. Ben Dietderich, a spokesman for Mr. Wright, said in a statement that the agency sought an “open and transparent dialogue around climate science.” He added, “Following the public comment period, we look forward to reviewing and engaging on substantive comments.”

The Trump administration is pursuing an aggressive agenda to ramp up the production and use of coal, oil and gas, the burning of which is the main driver of climate change.

At the same time, average global temperatures have risen by between 1.25 and 1.41 degrees Celsius (or 2.25 to 2.53 degrees Fahrenheit), compared with preindustrial times. That may sound small, but the warming has impacted every region of the planet with more frequent and intense heat waves, floods, wildfires, droughts and other disasters.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Scientists Denounce Trump Administration’s Climate Report – The New York Times

#2025 #America #ClimateReport #DonaldTrump #Education #EnergyDepartment #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Reading #Resistance #Science #Technology #TheNewYorkTimes #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

How stripping diversity, equity and inclusion from health care may make Americans sicker – The Conversation

Academic rigor, journalistic flair

The Trump administration has rescinded more than $1 billion in medical research funding, with one major target being research relating to diversity, equity and inclusion. Alina Kotliar / iStock via Getty Images Plus

How stripping diversity, equity and inclusion from health care may make Americans sicker

Published: August 27, 2025 8:01am EDTa

Editor’s Note: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion = DEI.

Authors

1. Abigail Folberg Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Nebraska Omaha
2. Brittany Givens Rassoolkhani Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, University of Kentucky

Disclosure statement

Abigail Folberg receives funding from the National Science Foundation. This article reflects her views and does not necessarily represent the views of the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Brittany Givens Rassoolkhani receives funding from The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. This article reflects her views and does not necessarily represent the views of the University of Kentucky.

Partners

View all partners

We believe in the free flow of information. Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.

President Donald Trump’s administration has dramatically reshaped health and medical research by rolling back federal funding from institutions that have diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and by cutting federal funding for research projects that the administration considers related to DEI.

As of Aug. 20, 2025, the National Institutes of Health has terminated over 5,100 grants totaling over US$4.4 billion in research funding. Likewise, the National Science Foundation, which seeks among other things to advance the nation’s health, has rescinded over 1,700 research grants totaling over $1 billion in funding.

These terminations have disproportionately affected projects that study the experiences of marginalized groups and funding to scientists from social groups that are underrepresented in academia. The federal judge overseeing a case challenging cuts to NIH grants said that he had “never seen government racial discrimination like this.”

Many Americans may view these cuts to health-related research as disconnected from the health care they receive. However, as a psychologist and a chemical engineer who study how gender and racial inequality affect well-being and the incidence and progression of disease, we believe that these changes will make all Americans less healthy.

Health repercussions for minority groups

The Trump administration’s funding cuts will most directly affect the health of members of marginalized groups, including, but not limited to, people of color, women and people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, intersex and transgender. The website grant.witness.us includes a list of the project descriptions of canceled grants. The NIH grants that were terminated include ones that funded research investigating the effects of food insecurity and stress on prenatal and birth outcomes among women of color, sex differences in major depression, and risk factors for suicidal behavior among gender minority adolescents.

The White House has also indicated that it intends to ax the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, which funds research on groups that tend to have poorer health outcomes, in its planned reorganization of the NIH.

These cuts will likely make these groups’ health outcomes worse. One of the reasons for these health disparities is that the health experiences and outcomes of members of marginalized social groups, such as women of color, have historically received less attention. Health disparities cannot be closed without high-quality research.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: How stripping diversity, equity and inclusion from health care may make Americans sicker

#2025 #America #AmericansSicker #DonaldTrump #Health #HealthResearch #History #JFKJunior #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Politics #Resistance #Science #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Trump’s attacks on the ‘Blacksonian’ have a history in a century-old myth | The Guardian

Trump’s attacks on the ‘Blacksonian’ have a history in a century-old myth

By Saida Grundy

The United Daughters of the Confederacy set out to make slavery respectable again by promoting ‘the lost cause’

Sat 23 Aug 2025 07.00 EDT

It should surprise no one that former cast members from reality shows that ran for more than 15 seasons are running out of new material.

Days ago, Donald Trump, former star of NBC’s The Apprentice and current US president, posted a lengthy Truth Social rant in which he (again) threatened the country’s leading cultural institutions to adhere to his political ideology. The target was one he has had in his crosshairs before – the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) – which Trump called “OUT OF CONTROL” in his post. “Everything discussed [in NMAAHC exhibits] is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was,” Trump unloaded. “WOKE IS BROKE,” he continued through his customary use of all caps and misplaced capitalization of common nouns. “We have the HOTTEST Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums.”

The tirade left many wondering what exactly Trump saw as the upsides of slavery, but also where they had previously heard this recycled talking point. The comment seemed to echo comments made just days prior by his fellow reality show bully Jillian Michaels, a former trainer on NBC’s The Biggest Loser, the weight-loss competition show that launched alongside The Apprentice in 2004. Michaels had been making her rounds in media and public appearances, rebranding from verbally abusive fat shamer to Maga influencer.

On CNN’s NewsNight, the host Abby Phillips moderated a roundtable discussion on Trump’s months-long overreach into cultural institutions such as the Kennedy Center and the NMAAHC. Michaels hijacked the conversation into a lament about slavery’s prominence in the massively popular museum’s displays on US history. “[Trump] is not whitewashing slavery, he’s not,” Michaels said. “You cannot tie slavery to just one race, which is what every single exhibit [at NMAAHC] does.” Turning towards the representative Ritchie Torres, who was seated beside her, Michaels unloaded popular far-right talking points. “Do you realize that only less than 2% of white Americans owned slaves?” she continued. “Do you realize slavery is thousands of years old? Do you know who was the first race who tried to end slavery?”

Torres’s interjections that slavery was a system of white supremacy, not a set of individual white acts, went unaddressed by the TV star. (From 20% to 50% of the white population in southern US states owned enslaved people, and all white people nationwide benefited from slavery’s racial order. Michael’s false claims prompted Phillips to later post a public correction.)

The tirade was an escalation of Trump’s previous open declarations to “restore truth and sanity to American history”, an effort to overhaul exhibits and installations across federally operated museums and galleries and politicize their content, with the NMAAHC locked squarely in the administration’s sights for what it called “corrosive ideology”. Previous edicts about the museum, lovingly nicknamed “The Blacksonian” by many of its patrons, had not specifically identified slavery as the White House’s gripe. But Trump’s Truth Social post more directly reflected a return to a century-old tactic to minimize chattel slavery as “not that bad”.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Trump’s attacks on the ‘Blacksonian’ have a history in a century-old myth | Saida Grundy | The Guardian

#2025 #America #AmericanMuseums #Blacksonian #Books #CivilWar #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #OldMyths #Opinion #Politics #Reading #Resistance #Science #Slavery #SmithsonianInstitution #TheGuardian #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedDaughtersOfTheConfederacy #UnitedStates

Changing the Smithsonian doesn’t erase slavery and the racial wealth gap – The Washington Post

Changing the Smithsonian doesn’t erase slavery and the racial wealth gap

There isn’t enough museum space to represent the full extent of the brutality that millions had to endure.

August 22, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. EDT, Yesterday at 6:00 a.m. EDT, 5 min

Column by Michelle Singletary

The legacy of slavery — and the decades of theft associated with it both before and after it ended — cannot be erased from American history.

Nor should it be minimized.

One might assume this didn’t need to be said. But comments made by President Donald Trump suggest otherwise.

Trump this week accused the Smithsonian Institution of being “WOKE” and too focused on slavery, using his platform to diminish itsimpact and criticize exhibits, including those at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington.

“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”

I am a descendant of enslaved people, and there isn’t enough museum space to represent the full extent of the brutalitythat millions had to endure.

In a 10-part award-winning series that I wrote five years ago, I aimed to dispel common misconceptions about race and inequality.

Sincerely, Michelle

Yes, Black Americans are entitled to reparations. We’ve earned them.

In one part, I recounted how my grandmother, Big Mama, told me about her enslaved great-grandmother, Leah Drumwright.

While caring for her own infant, Leah was forced to nurse the baby of the White woman who owned her. The woman made another demand, one that still fills me with grief and anger.

Leah was told she could nurse her own baby only on her right breast. Theleft was strictly reserved for the White baby. The woman’s rationale: The left breast, being closer to the heart, produced healthier milk, and therefore, the best milk had to be given to the White child.

One evening, exhausted from cleaning and cooking for the plantation owners, Leah was caught in the kitchen feeding her child on her left breast.

Fueled by rage, the White mother struck Leah across the face. A beating followed the slap.

I want to revisit part of the “Sincerely, Michelle” series because understanding our history with slavery is crucial to addressing economic disparities that still exist for Black Americans.

The institution that stripped Leah of basic human rights also seeded the discriminatory policies that systematically denied Blacks opportunity.

After the Civil War, many newlyfreed people purchased land, only to see it stolen. Prosperous Black towns were looted and burned. Blacks were denied the right to vote and were prohibited from living in certain neighborhoods.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Changing the Smithsonian doesn’t erase slavery and the racial wealth gap. – The Washington Post

#2025 #America #DonaldTrump #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #RacialWeathGap #Racism #Resistance #Science #Slavery #SmithsonianInstitution #TheWashingtonPost #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Trump administration’s anti-woke campaign targets Smithsonian museums | Trump administration | The Guardian

Trump administration’s anti-woke campaign targets Smithsonian museums

Exclusive: White House flags seven institutions including those for Latino, African and Asian art for review, document shows…

Joseph Gedeon in Washington, Wed 20 Aug 2025 20.36 EDT

Amid the Donald Trump administration’s heavy-handed review of Smithsonian museums, the Guardian has seen a document compiled by the White House that details examples of how the widely visited cultural institutions have overly negative portrayals of US history.

The document, based on public submissions shared with the administration, points to what it says are problematic exhibits at seven different museums, including a Benjamin Franklin exhibit that links his scientific achievements to his ownership of enslaved people and a film about George Floyd’s murder that it says mischaracterizes the police.

“President Trump will explore all options and avenues to get the Woke out of the Smithsonian and hold them accountable,” a White House official said. “Until we get info from the Smithsonian in response to our letter, we can’t verify the numbers of artifacts that have been removed because the Smithsonian has removed them on their own.”

Trump announced the initiative on Truth Social earlier this week, writing: “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been.”

The seven museums that have so far been flagged for review include the National Museum of American History, National Museum of the American Latino, National Museum of Natural History, National Museum of African Art, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Museum of Asian Art.

The administration argues exhibits at these museums focus excessively on oppression rather than American achievements. At the National Museum of American History, the document flagged the ¡Presente! Latino history exhibition for allegedly promoting an “anti-American agenda” by examining colonization effects and depicting the US as stealing territory from Mexico in 1848.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Trump administration’s anti-woke campaign targets Smithsonian museums | Trump administration | The Guardian

#2025 #America #DonaldTrump #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Politics #Resistance #Science #SmithsonianInstitution #TheGuardian #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Trump’s remarkable statement against states’ rights | CNN Politics

Trump’s remarkable statement against states’ rights

President Donald Trump’s announcement Monday that he will sign an executive order aimed at getting rid of mail-in ballots and voting machines seems unlikely to amount to much. He doesn’t appear to have any such authority, and legal challenges would surely follow.

But it was instructive in one way: It made clear the president elected to lead the party of states’ rights has very little regard for states’ rights.

Indeed, he almost seems to disdain them.

It’s difficult to read his comments any other way, especially as he has spent much of his second term attempting to chip away at states’ rights — or at least, the ones he doesn’t like.

While selling his new pitch to get rid of mail-in voting and voting machines, Trump included this remarkable pair of sentences.

“Remember, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”

Trump has described the states as “agents” of the federal government before in this context, but without casting them as subservient to him personally.

This is a rather novel take on the Constitution, to put it mildly.

As CNN’s Daniel Dale notes, the Constitution says the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections … shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.” Congress has a role, in that the Constitution says it can “make or alter such Regulations.” But there is no role for the president.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Trump’s remarkable statement against states’ rights | CNN Politics

#2025 #America #CNN #CNNPolitics #DonaldTrump #Elections #Health #History #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #NationalElections #Politics #Resistance #Science #StateLegislatures #StateRights #StatesRights #Steal2026 #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Opinion | American history can be painful. The Smithsonian should embrace it. – The Washington Post

Good foreign policy depends on good information

Readers also discuss a new way to address Confederate memorials, socialism in New York City and the Smithsonian.

Regarding the Aug. 13 news article “Rubio recasts beliefs with cuts to human rights reports”:

I oversaw the production of the State Department’s annual human rights reports from 2009 to 2012. For almost 50 years, thousands of career diplomats have participated in the compilation of these reports, which have become the most comprehensive and reliable public assessment of human rights conditions in almost 200 countries.

Mandated by Congress in the 1970s to inform decision-making about foreign aid and trade policies, the reports have become an indispensable resource. Global leaders use them to assess risks where they conduct business. Immigration judges in the United States and elsewhere rely on them when evaluating asylum claims. Civil society activists turn to them for credible information when they operate in places where publishing criticism of government actions leads to official reprisals. Journalists and representatives of humanitarian organizations use them to orient themselves as they begin working in complex environments.

All of these benefits are now being jeopardized by the Trump administration’s decision to slash the comprehensive nature of these reports and to dramatically politicize their content. Good foreign policy depends on good information. That begins with thorough, independent accounting of the state of human rights everywhere.

Weakening this foundation risks blinding us to them. Once the credibility of our reporting is lost, it will be extraordinarily difficult to rebuild.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Opinion | American history can be painful. The Smithsonian should embrace it. – The Washington Post

#2025 #America #AmericanHistory #DonaldTrump #Health #History #HumanRightsReport #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #MandatedByCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Rubio #Science #SmithsonianInstitution #TheWashingtonPost #Trump #TrumpAdministration #USStateDepartment #UnitedStates

$200 mill on a gold ballroom while Vets lose their health care – VoteVets.org

Paul, Travis here.

You ever see something that instantly gets under your skin?

I’ll admit, it’s happening to me a lot more than usual this year. And yesterday, something happened that really, really set me off.

Trump announced he’s putting in a $200 million gilded ballroom at the White House. Yeah, they’re blowing $200 million on a big room for people to come and bow before Trump.

That’s after Trump already paved over Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden. After he extorted Qatar for a $400 million jet, which is gonna cost $1 billion to get up to code, that he’s going to take personal possession of after he leaves office. After he threw himself a birthday parade at the cost of $45 million at minimum. After he’s taken something like 100 trips to his own golf courses on taxpayer dime — way more already than at this point in his first term.

Napkin math, that’s probably pushing $2 billion right there. And we’re not even getting into his crypto schemes and the global “deals” funnelling billions of dollars into his bank account.

You already know what’s happening back in the real world. The VA’s lost thousands of doctors, nurses, researchers, therapists, and caregivers. He’s selling off public lands to the highest bidder. He’s kicking literally hundreds of millions of people off their health care when they’re already struggling to get by. People can’t afford basic necessities because of his tariffs.

Trump can afford to blow $200 million on a golden ballroom at the White House but he can’t afford to help Veterans, the elderly, sick and hungry kids.

This is Marie Antoinette on steroids.

But that’s why I’m proud I get to work at VoteVets. It’s my job to find and build networks of support for thousands of Veterans around the country who decided to take a really tough step into public service. The only way we get to the other side of this is if people like them continue stepping up to put the country before themselves.

It’s not easy. It takes tons of work, and time away from your family and friends. You don’t get days off. It shouldn’t be this tough, but that’s the world we live in right now.

I’m proud of all of them. And I’m just so grateful I get to help them out.

The reality though, is that this work isn’t cheap. And sometimes it requires us making tough asks of the people who support us. Today is one of those days.

So, I’m humbly asking you: Can you make a donation to VoteVets today and help us lay the groundwork for taking back the House and the Senate next year? It’s our only shot at stopping Trump, and we’ve got to start now if we’re gonna have any chance. 

Thanks so much for the help.

Travis

See Web Site: https://votevets.org (message was email)

#2025 #America #DonaldTrump #Health #History #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #Politics #Resistance #Science #Technology #Trump #TrumpAdministration #USHouse #USSenate #UnitedStates #Veterans #VeteransOrganization #VoteVets #VoteVetsOrg

Letters from an American – July 12, 2025 – Heather Cox Richardson

On July 5, the day after the Texas floods hit, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) received 3,027 calls from survivors and answered 3,018 of them, about 99.7%, according to Maxine Joselow of the New York Times. But that day, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did not renew the contracts for four call center companies that answered those calls. The staff at the centers were fired. The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or about 35.8%. On Monday, July 7, FEMA received 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, around 15.9%.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said: “When a natural disaster strikes, phone calls surge, and wait times can subsequently increase. Despite this expected influx, FEMA’s disaster call center responded to every caller swiftly and efficiently, ensuring no one was left without assistance.”

Marcy Wheeler of EmptyWheel notes that one reason Noem has been cutting so ferociously at FEMA is because she has run through the money Congress allocated for HHS with her single-minded focus on immigration.

In May, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called out Noem’s expenditure of $200 million on an ad campaign pushing Trump’s agenda and $21 million to transport about 400 migrants to Guantanamo Bay only to have many of them transferred back out. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) told Noem: “You are spending like you don’t have a budget…. You’re on track to trigger the Anti-Deficiency Act. That means you are going to spend more money than you have been allocated by Congress. This is a rare occurrence, and it is wildly illegal. Your agency will be broke by July, over two months before the end of the fiscal year. You may not think that Congress has provided enough money to ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], but the Constitution and the federal law does not allow you to spend more money than you’ve been given, or to invent money. And this obsession with spending at the border…has left the country unprotected elsewhere.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: July 12, 2025

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