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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

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

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A blind woman, a ‘dream job,’ and the toll of the government shutdown – USA Today

A blind woman, a ‘dream job,’ and the toll of the government shutdown

The historic funding crisis inflicted pain on Americans across the country. Christine Grassman still hasn’t fully recovered.

By Zachary Schermele, USA TODAY

FALLS CHURCH, VA – It all started right before dragon boat practice.

Christine Grassman and her husband, Gary, had an important race coming up. In less than a week, the couple would be off to Florida for the national championships.

Much like the Grassmans, who are blind, dragon boating is often misunderstood. It’s confused with rowing, but they’re not the same. Dragon boaters use paddles and face forward; rowers use oars and face backward.

Read more: I survived breast cancer. Now I race dragon boats for Team USA. | Opinion

The lesser-known sport is also favored among people with disabilities – “paradragons,” as Christine and Gary call themselves. The two were “bit by the dragon” just after the coronavirus pandemic. Roughly four years later, Christine, at 56, is the president of their team, the “Out of Sight Dragons.”

On the morning of Oct. 11, Christine’s phone lit up with a text just as she and Gary were gearing up for one of their last workouts before nationals. Her supervisor at the U.S. Department of Education relayed a message that their team had received “reduction in force” notices. That’s Washington-speak for a layoff. She instructed Christine to check her own email.

She did. She let a “few choice phrases” slip. Her last day would be Dec. 9.

Christine was distraught. She also wasn’t alone. President Donald Trump’s administration fired more than 4,000 federal workers that weekend, just 10 days into what eventually became the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

Read more: Education Department lays off roughly 20% of its workforce amid shutdown

In the past, such ordeals caused furloughs that, while harmful, were only temporary and ended with federal workers eventually getting paid for their forced time away from the office. That’s what happened during Trump’s first term, when the government shuttered for 35 days, setting a record at the time.

In Trump’s second term, the administration’s decision to fire its employees during another historic shutdown became one of the funding crisis’ defining challenges.

The upheaval that people like Christine endured underscored just how harmful Washington gridlock can become for many Americans, including civil servants. That tumult has in turn affected some people with disabilities, who are employed at slightly higher rates in the federal government versus the private sector. Federal law has historically required agencies to plan to meet specific hiring goals for people with disabilities.Read more: Their time at the Education Department may be over. The grieving isn’t.

Claire Stanley, director of advocacy and governmental affairs for the American Council of the Blind, said Christine wasn’t the only blind or low-vision federal employee she knew who was initially laid off during the shutdown. Many others, though not fired, spent weeks without pay.

“All of us were kind of holding our breath,” she said.

Christine spoke to USA TODAY for this story in her personal capacity as an advocate for other blind people – she is the president of the Fairfax chapter of the National Federation of the Blind of Virginia – and as a member of AFGE Local 252, the union for Education Department employees. She said her views are not representative of the agency.

From a ‘dream job’ to nightmares

On Oct. 29, four weeks into the government shutdown, Christine sat in her apartment, resting both palms flat on her dining room table. Pixie, her Norwegian forest cat, lounged on a couch nearby, his sandy brown fur complementing the dark maroon upholstery.

For a multitude of reasons, she was on a higher dose of anxiety medication. Worries about caring for her aging parents usually live more toward the back of her mind. Since she was fired, those fears had shoved their way to the front.

Her mother has Alzheimer’s; her father, a longtime firefighter, has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. They both still live in Long Island, New York, Christine’s hometown.

Nightmares were making it harder to sleep. Her stomach hurt frequently.

Despite all those concerns, the previous 24 hours had brought some hope. On Oct. 28, a federal judge in California temporarily paused her firing, along with thousands of others. With most federal agencies still largely closed, though, she wasn’t back on the job yet.

The news offered only limited comfort. It did little to soothe her concerns about the long-term future of the federal law she has helped implement since 2019. Though housed in the Education Department, it’s not really about education at all.

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

Continue/Read Original Article Here: A blind woman, a ‘dream job,’ and the toll of the government shutdown

#2025 #america #blindWoman #civilServants #departmentOfEducation #donaldTrump #dragonBoating #dreamJob #education #federalGovernmentShutdown #fired #furloughed #health #history #laidOff #libraries #library #libraryOfCongress #nationalFederationOfTheBlind #opinion #pixie #politics #reductionInForce #resistance #science #tollOfShutdown #trump #trumpAdministration #unitedStates #usaToday #virginia

The political danger of the Epstein files for Trump – CNN Politics

The political danger of the Epstein files for Trump

Politics• 4 min read

Analysis by Aaron Blake, 10 hr ago

If President Donald Trump has nothing to hide vis-à-vis Jeffrey Epstein, he sure has a weird way of showing it.

Trump hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with the convicted sex offender, but he’s doing a great job of looking suspicious.

And that could be a political problem in and of itself – regardless of whatever ultimately comes from the Epstein files.

A batch of newly released Epstein emails on Wednesday added details about Trump’s past relationship with Epstein but no smoking guns. (The White House said the emails “prove absolutely nothing.”)

In one of those emails from 2011, Epstein expressed surprise to accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell that Trump’s name hadn’t surfaced amid accusations involving Epstein. Epstein added that Trump had at one point spent hours with Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre at Epstein’s house.

Related article Takeaways from the new Epstein emails mentioning Trump

And in 2019, Epstein appeared to signal Trump was quite aware of Maxwell recruiting girls from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in the early 2000s, saying “of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”

While some have claimed these emails show Trump had knowledge of or even involvement in Epstein’s crimes, it’s not nearly so evident. Giuffre, who died by suicide in April, has acknowledged meeting Trump and never accused him of wrongdoing. And Trump has acknowledged being aware of Maxwell recruiting employees including Giuffre from Mar-a-Lago. (The big question there is whether Trump had any inkling about what Maxwell was recruiting a minor female like Giuffre for.)

But also notable on Wednesday was Trump’s reaction.

As all this was going down, he and his White House seemed preoccupied with what appeared to an 11th-hour campaign to thwart a House discharge petition that would force a vote on releasing the full Epstein files.

With the petition due to get a decisive 218th signature when a new Democratic member of Congress was sworn in later that day, the White House held a meeting in the Situation Room with a key GOP lawmaker who’d signed on, while another said she was playing phone tag with the president. Both GOP congresswomen later told CNN Trump hadn’t personally lobbied them to remove their names. But the president also publicly pressured Republicans who sided with Democrats on forcing Epstein disclosures.

It was a weird move, to be sure. No Republicans removed their names from the petition, and Speaker Mike Johnson quickly said he would schedule a vote for next week on compelling the Justice Department to release the full files.

Related article Trump is getting pulled deeper and deeper into the Epstein drama

Even if the measure passes in the House, that’s not the end of the story. The GOP-led Senate would still have to take it up, and Trump would still have to sign it. So it’s not like this will cause the imminent release of the documents.

But Trump’s resistance to something his base has long clamored for – and the optics of the Situation Room meeting in particular – would only seem to deepen the huge suspicions that a large number of Americans already harbor about the government covering up Epstein-related matters.

And that gets at the big point here – and the political danger for Trump.

This is merely the latest baffling episode in the administration’s handling of the Epstein files. Among the others:

• The administration’s suspiciously timed, sudden reversal on releasing the files.
• Trump’s belated disclosure of his knowledge of Maxwell’s Mar-a-Lago recruitment.
• Trump’s weird denial of authoring a lewd letter for Epstein’s 50th birthday album.
• His other false claims about Epstein-related matters.
• The administration’s dubious decision to grant an interview with Maxwell, which seemed geared more toward helping Trump than anything else. (Sure enough, the newly released emails undercut Maxwell’s claims about Trump in that interview.)
• The transfer of Maxwell to a minimum-security prison camp that she didn’t appear eligible for without a waiver. The administration still hasn’t explained how this happened, months later. And CNN’s MJ Lee reported Thursday that Maxwell is getting special treatment there.

Even if Trump doesn’t have anything to hide, the danger here is in making it look a whole lot like he does.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: The political danger of the Epstein files for Trump | CNN Politics

#2025 #america #cnn #cnnPolitics #denials #donaldTrump #education #epstein #epsteinFiles #falseClaims #ghislaineMaxwell #health #history #jeffreyEpstein #libraries #library #libraryOfCongress #maxwellInterview #opinion #politics #prison #resistance #science #trump #trumpAdministration #unitedStates

Robert Redford, Diane Keaton and the Twilight of the Gods – The Hollywood Reporter

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Redford, Keaton and the Twilight of the Gods

The recent deaths of the icons cast a mournful light on a fading generation of actors who once redefined what movie stars could be — complex, messy, and all too human.

October 22, 2025

There was a moment, back in 2012, when Diane Keaton and Robert Redford nearly shared the screen. Both were reported to be “eyeing” the leads in a holiday-themed ensemble comedy titled The Most Wonderful Time, pitched as a Love Actually-style pastiche involving multiple interwoven tales of family and romance, all set against a backdrop of Christmas lights and yuletide meltdowns.

Alas, that movie never got made — at least not in that form — and Keaton and Redford never again came so close to working together. But in their own ways, these two very different actors — she, the eccentric spirit of New Hollywood comedy; he, the golden-boy stoic of the American pastoral — were bound by something even more powerful than onscreen chemistry: generational gravity. They belonged to the same loose orbit of 1970s-era performers who upended the rules of stardom and helped reshape what American movies could be.

Keaton died Oct. 11 at age 79 after a shockingly quick battle with pneumonia. Redford died in his sleep, at 89, a little less than a month earlier, on Sept. 16. Some from their cohort had gone before — Paul Newman in 2008, Shelley Duvall in 2024, Gene Hackman in February — while others have simply drifted from view. Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway — all now in their 80s — have largely stepped away from the spotlight.

Of course, this is nothing new. All stars, even the brightest, eventually flicker out as new generations take their place. But there’s something different — something more poignant — about watching this particular circle begin to vanish.

The stars who came before them had been shaped by the studio system — groomed, styled and slotted into types. They signed long-term contracts, wore what the wardrobe department handed them and gave interviews ghostwritten by studio publicists. Even the greats — Bogart, Hepburn, Gable, Davis — were often playing variations of a persona the system had helped construct. Their power came from polish, execution and consistency. Stardom was a product, and it was carefully managed.

By the time Redford, Keaton, Beatty and the others were coming of age as actors, the old studio scaffolding was already coming apart, with the contract system unraveling and the great moguls who once ruled the town with an iron fist fading from the scene. There was no longer a press-office puppeteer telling actors how to dress or what to say, no studio image to protect. They were free to define themselves — onscreen and off — and to let those two identities blur. Their personas could be withholding, eccentric, neurotic, ambiguous, strange. They could play characters the previous generation never got near: complicated people with unresolved feelings and messy inner lives.

At the same time, a new kind of director had taken over the asylum — such mavericks as Mike Nichols, Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, Alan J. Pakula and Martin Scorsese — filmmakers who weren’t interested in preserving the system. They wanted to blow it up. Their films — Carnal Knowledge, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Shampoo, Klute, Taxi Driver — didn’t just break the rules, they rewrote the language of cinema itself. And that reinvention gave this young, liberated generation of actors a canvas as unbound and unconventional as they were — a kind of free-spirited platform that hadn’t existed before and hasn’t really existed since.

Few actors made better use of that freedom than Redford and Keaton. In such films as The Candidate, Three Days of the Condor and The Way We Were, Redford turned the clean-cut leading man into something more introspective and morally uncertain — a figure torn between idealism and self-interest. Keaton took the same open, idiosyncratic presence that made Annie Hall so engaging and revealed its darker shades in The Godfather and Looking for Mr. Goodbar, proving she could be fearless, complex, even unsettling. Both found truth in contradiction. They made uncertainty look thrilling.

But by the early 1980s, as the counterculture spirit of the previous decade gave way to something more box office-driven and less tolerant of creative chaos, a different model of movie star started taking over. Actors weren’t seeking to challenge the system anymore; they were the system, powering tentpoles, sequels and high-concept hits that could sell in every corner of the world. This was the era of the Event Movie, when opening-weekend grosses became the new measure of stardom. The actors who began appearing on marquees — Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Willis, Gibson, Cruise — weren’t celebrated for subtlety or transformation or their onscreen bravery, but for their box office clout.

Sure, by the 1990s, there was a parallel indie movement where some of these stars could unfurl their dramatic range, ’70s-style — Cruise in Magnolia, Stallone in Cop Land — but for all the critical acclaim and Oscar attention those roles might attract, what defined success in 1980s and ’90s Hollywood were the ticket sales for such tentpoles as Top Gun, Die Hard, the Rambo movies and The Terminator. Actors had become commodities of scale, defined largely by their ability to summon $100 million grosses.

When the new millennium arrived, that equation shifted yet again, even if the focus on money hadn’t. Hollywood’s center of gravity moved from stars to franchises. The IP became the real draw — superheroes, wizards, Jedi and other branded worlds. The costume, often spandex, mattered more than the actor inside it (even Redford got in on the act, playing a Marvel villain in Captain America: The Winter Soldier). Stardom no longer was the engine of the movie business; it was just another interchangeable part of the business.

Then, in the 2010s and ’20s, stardom started moving from the big screen to a much smaller stage — the phone. Hollywood was still turning out superhero sagas, prestige dramas and cozy seasonal fare (like that Christmas movie, The Most Wonderful Time, eventually rewritten and released in 2015 as the forgettable Love the Coopers, with Keaton still starring and Redford’s role taken by, of all people, John Goodman). But the real competition for attention was moving elsewhere — to feeds and timelines, where fame was measured not by box office totals but by followers.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Robert Redford, Diane Keaton and the Twilight of the Gods

#2025 #America #Books #DianeKeaton #Education #Film #Films #History #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #Movies #OldHollywood #RobertRedford #Stars #TheHollywoodReporter #TwilightOfTheGods #UnitedStates

MIT rejects Trump administration’s offer of priority federal funding – The Washington Post

Higher Education

MIT rejects Trump administration deal for priority federal funding

MIT is one of the nine schools that were asked to agree to adopt conservative priorities and policies in exchange for funding perks.

October 10, 2025 at 11:16 a.m. EDTToday at 11:16 a.m. EDT, 4 min

By Susan Svrluga

MIT’s president turned down the Trump administration’s offer of priority access for federal funding Friday, publicly releasing a letterthat emphasized the eliteuniversity’s values including free expression and “the core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.”

Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.

Last week, the Trump administration offered nine universities a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” presented as an opportunity to receive competitive advantages from the federal government and from private donors for institutions that sign on. It was the latest attempt by the administration to force colleges into compliance with President Donald Trump’s ideological priorities, after months of federal research funding freezes and investigations into schools’ adherence to civil rights laws.

The administration asked the schools to, among other changes, agree to prohibit consideration of factors such as gender, race or political views in admissions, scholarships or programming; freeze tuition for five years; adopt a strict definition of gender; and maintain neutrality at all levels when representing the institution. In a letter to universities, administration officials asked for feedback to the compact by Oct. 20.

One higher education leader in Texas immediately said it was an honor to be among the first schools asked to participate, and a White House official said other colleges had asked to sign on.

Editor’s Note: See Also these reports, and see below for the compact document sent to universities and colleges; the link shows the Washington Post article with the document text.

See Also: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/10/03/trump-administration-college-funding-compact/

Continue/Read Original Article Here: MIT rejects Trump administration’s offer of priority federal funding – The Washington Post

#2025 #America #AntiDemocracy #Books #ConservativeValues #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Massachusetts #MassachusettsInstituteOfTechnology #MIT #Opinion #Politics #PriorityFederalFunding #Reading #RejectsTrumpCompact #Resistance #Science #Technology #TheWashingtonPost #Trump #TrumpAdministration #TrumpCompact #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

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

Letters from an American – September 11, 2025 – Heather Cox Richardson

Letters from an American, September 11, 2025

By Heather Cox Richardson, Sep 11, 2025

Twenty-four years ago today, terrorists from the al-Qaeda network used four civilian airplanes as weapons against the United States, crashing two of them into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in New York City and a third into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.

Four years ago, George W. Bush, who was president on that horrific day, spoke in Pennsylvania at a memorial for the passengers of the fourth flight, United Airlines Flight 93, who on September 11, 2001, stormed the cockpit and brought their airplane down in a field, killing everyone on board but denying the terrorists a fourth American trophy.

Former president Bush said: “Twenty years ago, terrorists chose a random group of Americans, on a routine flight, to be collateral damage in a spectacular act of terror. The 33 passengers and 7 crew of Flight 93 could have been any group of citizens selected by fate. In a sense, they stood in for us all.” And, Bush continued, “The terrorists soon discovered that a random group of Americans is an exceptional group of people. Facing an impossible circumstance, they comforted their loved ones by phone, braced each other for action, and defeated the designs of evil.”

Recalling his experience that day, Bush talked of “the America I know.”

“On America’s day of trial and grief, I saw millions of people instinctively grab for a neighbor’s hand and rally to the cause of one another…. At a time when religious bigotry might have flowed freely, I saw Americans reject prejudice and embrace people of Muslim faith…. At a time when nativism could have stirred hatred and violence against people perceived as outsiders, I saw Americans reaffirm their welcome to immigrants and refugees…. At a time when some viewed the rising generation as individualistic and decadent, I saw young people embrace an ethic of service and rise to selfless action.”

Bush celebrated the selfless heroism and care for others shown by those like Welles Crowther, the man in the red bandana, who helped others out of danger before succumbing himself; the airplane passengers who called their loved ones to say goodbye; neighbors; firefighters; law enforcement officers; the men and women who volunteered for military service after the attack.

That day, and our memories of it, show American democracy at its best: ordinary Americans putting in the work, even at its dirtiest and most dangerous, to take care of each other.

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

Continue/Read Original Article Here: (1) September 11, 2025 – by Heather Cox Richardson

#2025 #911 #America #DonaldTrump #Health #HeatherCoxRichardson #History #LettersFromAnAmerican #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Politics #PresidentBush #Resistance #Science #September112001 #Substack #Television #Trump #TrumpAdministration #TwinTowers #UnitedStates #WorldTradeCenter

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

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

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

SF-Based Internet Archive Is Now a Federal Depository Library. What Does That Mean? | KQED

By Morgan Sung, Jul 24

The San Francisco-based Internet Archive now has federal depository status, joining a network of over 1,100 libraries that archive government documents and make them accessible to the public — even as ongoing legal challenges pose an existential threat to the organization.

California Sen. Alex Padilla made the designation in a letter sent Thursday to the Government Publishing Office, which oversees the program. In the letter, shared exclusively with KQED, Padilla praised the Internet Archive for its “digital focus” and said it “is leading the way when it comes to providing online library services.”

“The Archive’s digital-first approach makes it the perfect fit for a modern federal depository library, expanding access to federal government publications amid an increasingly digital landscape,” Padilla said in a statement to KQED. “The Internet Archive has broken down countless barriers to accessing information, and it is my honor to provide this designation to help further their mission of providing ‘Universal Access to All Knowledge.’”

Under federal law, members of Congress can designate up to two qualified libraries for federal depository status.

Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle said that while the nonprofit organization has always functioned as a library, this new designation makes it easier to work with the other federal depository libraries. That, he said, is a service to everyone.

“ I think there is a great deal of excitement to have an organization such as the Internet Archive, which has physical collections of materials, but is really known mostly for being accessible as part of the internet,” Kahle said. “And helping integrate these materials into things like Wikipedia, so that the whole internet ecosystem gets stronger as digital learners get closer access into the government materials.”

The Federal Depository Library Program was established by Congress in 1813, with the intention of ensuring that government records would be accessible to the American public. It includes maps, environmental reports, health studies, congressional records, newspapers and books.

These records account for “millions and millions of pages” that can take up entire floors of public libraries, Kahle said. San Diego’s public library gave up its federal depository status in 2020 because its government documents took up so much space and often went unused.

These records account for “millions and millions of pages” that can take up entire floors of public libraries, Kahle said. San Diego’s public library gave up its federal depository status in 2020 because its government documents took up so much space and often went unused.

Article…

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

Continue/Read Original Article Here: SF-Based Internet Archive Is Now a Federal Depository Library. What Does That Mean? | KQED

#2025 #America #BethLaBerge #Books #California #FederalDepositoryLibrary #Health #History #InternetArchive #KQED #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #MorganSung #Movies #Reading #Science #Technology #Television #UnitedStates

‘A privilege and a great pleasure’: inside the 5,000-item Stephen Sondheim collection
#LibraryOfCongress #SpecialCollections #StephenSondheim
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/jul/22/a-privilege-and-a-great-pleasure-inside-the-5000-item-stephen-sondheim-collection

Trump’s mass deportation is backfiring -CNN Politics

Analysis by Aaron Blake, CNN, 3 minute read, Published 7:00 AM EDT, Sun July 13, 2025

Trump’s mass deportation is backfiring

CNN  — President Donald Trump and his administration continue to bet big on the issue that, more than any other, appeared to help him win him a second term in 2024: immigration.

The administration and its allies have gleefully played up standoffs between federal immigration agents and protesters, such as the one Thursday during a raid at a legal marijuana farm in Ventura County, California.

And as congressional Republicans were passing a very unpopular Trump agenda bill last month, Vice President JD Vance argued that its historic expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and new immigration enforcement provisions were so important that “everything else” was “immaterial.”

But this appears to be an increasingly bad bet for Trump and Co.

It’s looking more and more like Trump has botched an issue that, by all rights, should have been a great one for him. And ICE’s actions appear to be a big part of that.

The most recent polling on this comes from Gallup, where the findings are worse than those of any poll in Trump’s second term.

The nearly monthlong survey conducted in June found Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of immigration by a wide margin: 62% to 35%. And more than twice as many Americans strongly disapproved (45%) as strongly approved (21%).

It also found nearly 7 in 10 independents disapproved.

These are Trump’s worst numbers on immigration yet. But the trend has clearly been downward – especially in high-quality polling like Gallup’s.

An NPR-PBS News-Marist College poll conducted late last month, for instance, showed 59% of independents disapproved of Trump on immigration. And a Quinnipiac University poll showed 66% of independents disapproved.

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

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Trump’s mass deportation is backfiring | CNN Politics

#2025 #America #CNN #CNNPolitics #Disapproval #DonaldTrump #Health #History #Immigration #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #Politics #Resistance #Science #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

@torrentfreak Copyright should go back to 14 years, with one 14-year renewal term. This would follow the letter and spirit of the #Constitution, as copyright was originally intended to be.

#copyright was never intended to be a continuing income stream for the creator, and certainly not for the #heirs and #estates.
#statuteofanne #library #libraries #publicdomain #publicdomainart #publicdomainday #publicdomaindedication #congress #loc #libraryofcongress #books #publishers #publishersweekly #bookpublishers #bookpublishing #bookpublisher #SimonandSchuster #hachette #hachetteaudio