#libraryofcongress — Public Fediverse posts

"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

The Hill

Several years ago, I started a birthday tradition of taking either a day trip or a vacation. In 2017, it was a day trip to the Peabody Essex Museum for their Ocean Liners: Glamour, Speed and Style exhibition. Last year, I went to Ticonderoga, NY, for a few days to visit, among other things, the Star Trek: Original Series Set Tour. But for my birthday this year, I decided to visit Washington, D.C., for nearly a week. Although I have been to D.C. a few times on business, I never really had the chance to explore the city during those trips, except for a quick afternoon walk around the National Mall. That changed last week.

Although I considered flying, I decided to drive because I’ve always wanted to visit the WWII battleship USS New Jersey. After a slightly over four-hour drive, I arrived at the Iowa-class battleship. Having previously visited the USS Iowa in Los Angeles, I found the New Jersey no less impressive. As the most decorated of all the Iowa-class ships, the New Jersey’s tour reflected the pride of those who work on and visit her.

The following day, I arrived by the Metro’s Red Line in Washington, D.C., and walked down to the National Mall. I had forgotten how majestic the city is. It doesn’t matter what your political views are; it’s the city’s design and grandeur that engulfs you. With the United States Capitol on one side and the Washington Monument on the other, the city invites exploration.

My first museum visit was to the storied National Gallery of Art. Its outstanding collection spans the Middle Ages to the present and encompasses two buildings—the neoclassical original and a contemporary one designed by I.M. Pei. The sculpture garden is also a delight. There are so many wonderful exhibitions and works of art on display that it’s hard to pick a favorite. I did, however, love Thomas Cole’s The Voyage of Life. If you love museums, the National Gallery will take most of the day.

The next day started with a VIP tour of the United States Capitol by a staff member of my state congressional representative. From the spacious visitor center and Exhibition Hall, the tour traveled from the original entrance, Senate, and Supreme Court to the wondrous Capitol Rotunda and National Statuary Hall. The tour concluded with a visit to the House of Representatives Chamber (no cameras/cell phones were allowed). As all points in Washington, D.C. radiate from this point geographically and politically, it is here that you literally feel our republic in action.

From an architectural standpoint alone, the Library of Congress is well worth a visit. The Main Reading Room would compel even the most reluctant reader to pick up a book. I particularly enjoyed the Two Georges: Parallel Lives in an Age of Revolution exhibition. The exhibition contrasts two living legends who lived at the same time – George Washington and King George III.

Needless to say, a visit to the top of the Washington Monument reveals breathtaking views of D.C. From there, a visit to the solemnity of the World War II Memorial, followed by the Lincoln Memorial, was in order. One can’t help but be reflective and thankful when viewing President Abraham Lincoln’s statue. If it were not for Lincoln, there would not be a United States of America. Although I had to memorize the Gettysburg Address in grade school, the following excerpt from his speech, written over 150 years ago, still resonates today, “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” I know we can.

“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” As an American citizen (and for all those who aspire to be), that singular sentence in the Declaration of Independence forms the bedrock of this country. My visit to the National Archives the next day to view the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights was rightly an emotional one. For it was the authorship, execution, and adherence to these documents that established the United States. While it’s easy to take what we have here for granted if you’ve never traveled outside the country, I, for one, am both happy and thankful to see the sign “Welcome to the United States” when I return from an international trip.

For those who follow me on social media or know me personally, you know I love the world of James Bond. Therefore, a visit to the International Spy Museum was a must! When you first enter the lobby, you are greeted by the 1964 Aston Martin DB5 driven by Sean Connery in Goldfinger. That certainly gets you in the mood for spying! But this museum is much more than Bond. It takes you into the world of covert intelligence agencies around the world, with their stories, gadgets, and missions. The museum does an excellent job of covering spy networks in the OAS (precursor to the CIA) from WWII through the Cold War decades, and it features riveting exhibitions that test your abilities as a spy. Although I was there for 3.5 hours, I easily could have spent the majority of the day.

With my passion for NASA, space exploration, and all things aviation, day four was my visit to the National Air and Space Museum. Although I had previously visited the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia near Dulles International Airport, I had yet to visit the museum’s location on the Mall. As you enter the lobby, you’re greeted by the Friendship 7 space capsule that carried John Glenn—the first American to orbit Earth—to space. Just next to the capsule is the unflown Lunar Module from the Apollo era. You don’t need to walk far from the Lunar Module to see the iconic model of the Starship Enterprise from the 1960s TV series Star Trek. When you juxtapose the original Wright Flyer with the Apollo 11 command module, Columbia, in the same building, you can’t help but be in awe of what mankind can accomplish. In less than a century, we went from flying 120 feet at just over 6 miles per hour to landing a man on the Moon. In a museum like this, you can imagine what’s possible in the next 100 years.

My vacation to Washington, D.C. concluded the next day with a visit to the National Zoo. Having grown up on a farm, I became very familiar with a variety of animals. But certainly, the variety I lived with didn’t compare to what this magnificent zoo offered! From Giant Pandas, Asian elephants, Andean Bears, Brown Pelicans, and Siberian Tigers to over 2,000 other animals, the National Zoo has something for everyone. I particularly loved seeing the Beavers. When we lived on our farm, a family of Beavers turned our small brook into a large lake!

While my vacation to our nation’s capital may have come to an end, I left with a renewed appreciation for my country. While the Capitol represents our government, it is the museums that embody the very essence of the country. From history to art to science and all their interrelated fields, one leaves Washington, D.C., knowing more than when they arrived. The uniqueness of the United States should never be taken for granted. As the United States will soon celebrate its 250th anniversary, the founding fathers would be proud that, because of three words in the Constitution, the United States has withstood tyranny and triumphed, resulting in American exceptionalism. 

“We the People”

The Hill

Several years ago, I started a birthday tradition of taking either a day trip or a vacation. In 2017, it was a day trip to the Peabody Essex Museum for their Ocean Liners: Glamour, Speed and Style exhibition. Last year, I went to Ticonderoga, NY, for a few days to visit, among other things, the Star Trek: Original Series Set Tour. But for my birthday this year, I decided to visit Washington, D.C., for nearly a week. Although I have been to D.C. a few times on business, I never really had the chance to explore the city during those trips, except for a quick afternoon walk around the National Mall. That changed last week.

Although I considered flying, I decided to drive because I’ve always wanted to visit the WWII battleship USS New Jersey. After a slightly over four-hour drive, I arrived at the Iowa-class battleship. Having previously visited the USS Iowa in Los Angeles, I found the New Jersey no less impressive. As the most decorated of all the Iowa-class ships, the New Jersey’s tour reflected the pride of those who work on and visit her.

The following day, I arrived by the Metro’s Red Line in Washington, D.C., and walked down to the National Mall. I had forgotten how majestic the city is. It doesn’t matter what your political views are; it’s the city’s design and grandeur that engulfs you. With the United States Capitol on one side and the Washington Monument on the other, the city invites exploration.

My first museum visit was to the storied National Gallery of Art. Its outstanding collection spans the Middle Ages to the present and encompasses two buildings—the neoclassical original and a contemporary one designed by I.M. Pei. The sculpture garden is also a delight. There are so many wonderful exhibitions and works of art on display that it’s hard to pick a favorite. I did, however, love Thomas Cole’s The Voyage of Life. If you love museums, the National Gallery will take most of the day.

The next day started with a VIP tour of the United States Capitol by a staff member of my state congressional representative. From the spacious visitor center and Exhibition Hall, the tour traveled from the original entrance, Senate, and Supreme Court to the wondrous Capitol Rotunda and National Statuary Hall. The tour concluded with a visit to the House of Representatives Chamber (no cameras/cell phones were allowed). As all points in Washington, D.C. radiate from this point geographically and politically, it is here that you literally feel our republic in action.

From an architectural standpoint alone, the Library of Congress is well worth a visit. The Main Reading Room would compel even the most reluctant reader to pick up a book. I particularly enjoyed the Two Georges: Parallel Lives in an Age of Revolution exhibition. The exhibition contrasts two living legends who lived at the same time – George Washington and King George III.

Needless to say, a visit to the top of the Washington Monument reveals breathtaking views of D.C. From there, a visit to the solemnity of the World War II Memorial, followed by the Lincoln Memorial, was in order. One can’t help but be reflective and thankful when viewing President Abraham Lincoln’s statue. If it were not for Lincoln, there would not be a United States of America. Although I had to memorize the Gettysburg Address in grade school, the following excerpt from his speech, written over 150 years ago, still resonates today, “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” I know we can.

“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” As an American citizen (and for all those who aspire to be), that singular sentence in the Declaration of Independence forms the bedrock of this country. My visit to the National Archives the next day to view the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights was rightly an emotional one. For it was the authorship, execution, and adherence to these documents that established the United States. While it’s easy to take what we have here for granted if you’ve never traveled outside the country, I, for one, am both happy and thankful to see the sign “Welcome to the United States” when I return from an international trip.

For those who follow me on social media or know me personally, you know I love the world of James Bond. Therefore, a visit to the International Spy Museum was a must! When you first enter the lobby, you are greeted by the 1964 Aston Martin DB5 driven by Sean Connery in Goldfinger. That certainly gets you in the mood for spying! But this museum is much more than Bond. It takes you into the world of covert intelligence agencies around the world, with their stories, gadgets, and missions. The museum does an excellent job of covering spy networks in the OAS (precursor to the CIA) from WWII through the Cold War decades, and it features riveting exhibitions that test your abilities as a spy. Although I was there for 3.5 hours, I easily could have spent the majority of the day.

With my passion for NASA, space exploration, and all things aviation, day four was my visit to the National Air and Space Museum. Although I had previously visited the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia near Dulles International Airport, I had yet to visit the museum’s location on the Mall. As you enter the lobby, you’re greeted by the Friendship 7 space capsule that carried John Glenn—the first American to orbit Earth—to space. Just next to the capsule is the unflown Lunar Module from the Apollo era. You don’t need to walk far from the Lunar Module to see the iconic model of the Starship Enterprise from the 1960s TV series Star Trek. When you juxtapose the original Wright Flyer with the Apollo 11 command module, Columbia, in the same building, you can’t help but be in awe of what mankind can accomplish. In less than a century, we went from flying 120 feet at just over 6 miles per hour to landing a man on the Moon. In a museum like this, you can imagine what’s possible in the next 100 years.

My vacation to Washington, D.C. concluded the next day with a visit to the National Zoo. Having grown up on a farm, I became very familiar with a variety of animals. But certainly, the variety I lived with didn’t compare to what this magnificent zoo offered! From Giant Pandas, Asian elephants, Andean Bears, Brown Pelicans, and Siberian Tigers to over 2,000 other animals, the National Zoo has something for everyone. I particularly loved seeing the Beavers. When we lived on our farm, a family of Beavers turned our small brook into a large lake!

While my vacation to our nation’s capital may have come to an end, I left with a renewed appreciation for my country. While the Capitol represents our government, it is the museums that embody the very essence of the country. From history to art to science and all their interrelated fields, one leaves Washington, D.C., knowing more than when they arrived. The uniqueness of the United States should never be taken for granted. As the United States will soon celebrate its 250th anniversary, the founding fathers would be proud that, because of three words in the Constitution, the United States has withstood tyranny and triumphed, resulting in American exceptionalism. 

“We the People”

The Hill

Several years ago, I started a birthday tradition of taking either a day trip or a vacation. In 2017, it was a day trip to the Peabody Essex Museum for their Ocean Liners: Glamour, Speed and Style exhibition. Last year, I went to Ticonderoga, NY, for a few days to visit, among other things, the Star Trek: Original Series Set Tour. But for my birthday this year, I decided to visit Washington, D.C., for nearly a week. Although I have been to D.C. a few times on business, I never really had the chance to explore the city during those trips, except for a quick afternoon walk around the National Mall. That changed last week.

Although I considered flying, I decided to drive because I’ve always wanted to visit the WWII battleship USS New Jersey. After a slightly over four-hour drive, I arrived at the Iowa-class battleship. Having previously visited the USS Iowa in Los Angeles, I found the New Jersey no less impressive. As the most decorated of all the Iowa-class ships, the New Jersey’s tour reflected the pride of those who work on and visit her.

The following day, I arrived by the Metro’s Red Line in Washington, D.C., and walked down to the National Mall. I had forgotten how majestic the city is. It doesn’t matter what your political views are; it’s the city’s design and grandeur that engulfs you. With the United States Capitol on one side and the Washington Monument on the other, the city invites exploration.

My first museum visit was to the storied National Gallery of Art. Its outstanding collection spans the Middle Ages to the present and encompasses two buildings—the neoclassical original and a contemporary one designed by I.M. Pei. The sculpture garden is also a delight. There are so many wonderful exhibitions and works of art on display that it’s hard to pick a favorite. I did, however, love Thomas Cole’s The Voyage of Life. If you love museums, the National Gallery will take most of the day.

The next day started with a VIP tour of the United States Capitol by a staff member of my state congressional representative. From the spacious visitor center and Exhibition Hall, the tour traveled from the original entrance, Senate, and Supreme Court to the wondrous Capitol Rotunda and National Statuary Hall. The tour concluded with a visit to the House of Representatives Chamber (no cameras/cell phones were allowed). As all points in Washington, D.C. radiate from this point geographically and politically, it is here that you literally feel our republic in action.

From an architectural standpoint alone, the Library of Congress is well worth a visit. The Main Reading Room would compel even the most reluctant reader to pick up a book. I particularly enjoyed the Two Georges: Parallel Lives in an Age of Revolution exhibition. The exhibition contrasts two living legends who lived at the same time – George Washington and King George III.

Needless to say, a visit to the top of the Washington Monument reveals breathtaking views of D.C. From there, a visit to the solemnity of the World War II Memorial, followed by the Lincoln Memorial, was in order. One can’t help but be reflective and thankful when viewing President Abraham Lincoln’s statue. If it were not for Lincoln, there would not be a United States of America. Although I had to memorize the Gettysburg Address in grade school, the following excerpt from his speech, written over 150 years ago, still resonates today, “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” I know we can.

“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” As an American citizen (and for all those who aspire to be), that singular sentence in the Declaration of Independence forms the bedrock of this country. My visit to the National Archives the next day to view the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights was rightly an emotional one. For it was the authorship, execution, and adherence to these documents that established the United States. While it’s easy to take what we have here for granted if you’ve never traveled outside the country, I, for one, am both happy and thankful to see the sign “Welcome to the United States” when I return from an international trip.

For those who follow me on social media or know me personally, you know I love the world of James Bond. Therefore, a visit to the International Spy Museum was a must! When you first enter the lobby, you are greeted by the 1964 Aston Martin DB5 driven by Sean Connery in Goldfinger. That certainly gets you in the mood for spying! But this museum is much more than Bond. It takes you into the world of covert intelligence agencies around the world, with their stories, gadgets, and missions. The museum does an excellent job of covering spy networks in the OAS (precursor to the CIA) from WWII through the Cold War decades, and it features riveting exhibitions that test your abilities as a spy. Although I was there for 3.5 hours, I easily could have spent the majority of the day.

With my passion for NASA, space exploration, and all things aviation, day four was my visit to the National Air and Space Museum. Although I had previously visited the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia near Dulles International Airport, I had yet to visit the museum’s location on the Mall. As you enter the lobby, you’re greeted by the Friendship 7 space capsule that carried John Glenn—the first American to orbit Earth—to space. Just next to the capsule is the unflown Lunar Module from the Apollo era. You don’t need to walk far from the Lunar Module to see the iconic model of the Starship Enterprise from the 1960s TV series Star Trek. When you juxtapose the original Wright Flyer with the Apollo 11 command module, Columbia, in the same building, you can’t help but be in awe of what mankind can accomplish. In less than a century, we went from flying 120 feet at just over 6 miles per hour to landing a man on the Moon. In a museum like this, you can imagine what’s possible in the next 100 years.

My vacation to Washington, D.C. concluded the next day with a visit to the National Zoo. Having grown up on a farm, I became very familiar with a variety of animals. But certainly, the variety I lived with didn’t compare to what this magnificent zoo offered! From Giant Pandas, Asian elephants, Andean Bears, Brown Pelicans, and Siberian Tigers to over 2,000 other animals, the National Zoo has something for everyone. I particularly loved seeing the Beavers. When we lived on our farm, a family of Beavers turned our small brook into a large lake!

While my vacation to our nation’s capital may have come to an end, I left with a renewed appreciation for my country. While the Capitol represents our government, it is the museums that embody the very essence of the country. From history to art to science and all their interrelated fields, one leaves Washington, D.C., knowing more than when they arrived. The uniqueness of the United States should never be taken for granted. As the United States will soon celebrate its 250th anniversary, the founding fathers would be proud that, because of three words in the Constitution, the United States has withstood tyranny and triumphed, resulting in American exceptionalism. 

“We the People”

The Hill

Several years ago, I started a birthday tradition of taking either a day trip or a vacation. In 2017, it was a day trip to the Peabody Essex Museum for their Ocean Liners: Glamour, Speed and Style exhibition. Last year, I went to Ticonderoga, NY, for a few days to visit, among other things, the Star Trek: Original Series Set Tour. But for my birthday this year, I decided to visit Washington, D.C., for nearly a week. Although I have been to D.C. a few times on business, I never really had the chance to explore the city during those trips, except for a quick afternoon walk around the National Mall. That changed last week.

Although I considered flying, I decided to drive because I’ve always wanted to visit the WWII battleship USS New Jersey. After a slightly over four-hour drive, I arrived at the Iowa-class battleship. Having previously visited the USS Iowa in Los Angeles, I found the New Jersey no less impressive. As the most decorated of all the Iowa-class ships, the New Jersey’s tour reflected the pride of those who work on and visit her.

The following day, I arrived by the Metro’s Red Line in Washington, D.C., and walked down to the National Mall. I had forgotten how majestic the city is. It doesn’t matter what your political views are; it’s the city’s design and grandeur that engulfs you. With the United States Capitol on one side and the Washington Monument on the other, the city invites exploration.

My first museum visit was to the storied National Gallery of Art. Its outstanding collection spans the Middle Ages to the present and encompasses two buildings—the neoclassical original and a contemporary one designed by I.M. Pei. The sculpture garden is also a delight. There are so many wonderful exhibitions and works of art on display that it’s hard to pick a favorite. I did, however, love Thomas Cole’s The Voyage of Life. If you love museums, the National Gallery will take most of the day.

The next day started with a VIP tour of the United States Capitol by a staff member of my state congressional representative. From the spacious visitor center and Exhibition Hall, the tour traveled from the original entrance, Senate, and Supreme Court to the wondrous Capitol Rotunda and National Statuary Hall. The tour concluded with a visit to the House of Representatives Chamber (no cameras/cell phones were allowed). As all points in Washington, D.C. radiate from this point geographically and politically, it is here that you literally feel our republic in action.

From an architectural standpoint alone, the Library of Congress is well worth a visit. The Main Reading Room would compel even the most reluctant reader to pick up a book. I particularly enjoyed the Two Georges: Parallel Lives in an Age of Revolution exhibition. The exhibition contrasts two living legends who lived at the same time – George Washington and King George III.

Needless to say, a visit to the top of the Washington Monument reveals breathtaking views of D.C. From there, a visit to the solemnity of the World War II Memorial, followed by the Lincoln Memorial, was in order. One can’t help but be reflective and thankful when viewing President Abraham Lincoln’s statue. If it were not for Lincoln, there would not be a United States of America. Although I had to memorize the Gettysburg Address in grade school, the following excerpt from his speech, written over 150 years ago, still resonates today, “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” I know we can.

“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” As an American citizen (and for all those who aspire to be), that singular sentence in the Declaration of Independence forms the bedrock of this country. My visit to the National Archives the next day to view the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights was rightly an emotional one. For it was the authorship, execution, and adherence to these documents that established the United States. While it’s easy to take what we have here for granted if you’ve never traveled outside the country, I, for one, am both happy and thankful to see the sign “Welcome to the United States” when I return from an international trip.

For those who follow me on social media or know me personally, you know I love the world of James Bond. Therefore, a visit to the International Spy Museum was a must! When you first enter the lobby, you are greeted by the 1964 Aston Martin DB5 driven by Sean Connery in Goldfinger. That certainly gets you in the mood for spying! But this museum is much more than Bond. It takes you into the world of covert intelligence agencies around the world, with their stories, gadgets, and missions. The museum does an excellent job of covering spy networks in the OAS (precursor to the CIA) from WWII through the Cold War decades, and it features riveting exhibitions that test your abilities as a spy. Although I was there for 3.5 hours, I easily could have spent the majority of the day.

With my passion for NASA, space exploration, and all things aviation, day four was my visit to the National Air and Space Museum. Although I had previously visited the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia near Dulles International Airport, I had yet to visit the museum’s location on the Mall. As you enter the lobby, you’re greeted by the Friendship 7 space capsule that carried John Glenn—the first American to orbit Earth—to space. Just next to the capsule is the unflown Lunar Module from the Apollo era. You don’t need to walk far from the Lunar Module to see the iconic model of the Starship Enterprise from the 1960s TV series Star Trek. When you juxtapose the original Wright Flyer with the Apollo 11 command module, Columbia, in the same building, you can’t help but be in awe of what mankind can accomplish. In less than a century, we went from flying 120 feet at just over 6 miles per hour to landing a man on the Moon. In a museum like this, you can imagine what’s possible in the next 100 years.

My vacation to Washington, D.C. concluded the next day with a visit to the National Zoo. Having grown up on a farm, I became very familiar with a variety of animals. But certainly, the variety I lived with didn’t compare to what this magnificent zoo offered! From Giant Pandas, Asian elephants, Andean Bears, Brown Pelicans, and Siberian Tigers to over 2,000 other animals, the National Zoo has something for everyone. I particularly loved seeing the Beavers. When we lived on our farm, a family of Beavers turned our small brook into a large lake!

While my vacation to our nation’s capital may have come to an end, I left with a renewed appreciation for my country. While the Capitol represents our government, it is the museums that embody the very essence of the country. From history to art to science and all their interrelated fields, one leaves Washington, D.C., knowing more than when they arrived. The uniqueness of the United States should never be taken for granted. As the United States will soon celebrate its 250th anniversary, the founding fathers would be proud that, because of three words in the Constitution, the United States has withstood tyranny and triumphed, resulting in American exceptionalism. 

“We the People”

The Hill

Several years ago, I started a birthday tradition of taking either a day trip or a vacation. In 2017, it was a day trip to the Peabody Essex Museum for their Ocean Liners: Glamour, Speed and Style exhibition. Last year, I went to Ticonderoga, NY, for a few days to visit, among other things, the Star Trek: Original Series Set Tour. But for my birthday this year, I decided to visit Washington, D.C., for nearly a week. Although I have been to D.C. a few times on business, I never really had the chance to explore the city during those trips, except for a quick afternoon walk around the National Mall. That changed last week.

Although I considered flying, I decided to drive because I’ve always wanted to visit the WWII battleship USS New Jersey. After a slightly over four-hour drive, I arrived at the Iowa-class battleship. Having previously visited the USS Iowa in Los Angeles, I found the New Jersey no less impressive. As the most decorated of all the Iowa-class ships, the New Jersey’s tour reflected the pride of those who work on and visit her.

The following day, I arrived by the Metro’s Red Line in Washington, D.C., and walked down to the National Mall. I had forgotten how majestic the city is. It doesn’t matter what your political views are; it’s the city’s design and grandeur that engulfs you. With the United States Capitol on one side and the Washington Monument on the other, the city invites exploration.

My first museum visit was to the storied National Gallery of Art. Its outstanding collection spans the Middle Ages to the present and encompasses two buildings—the neoclassical original and a contemporary one designed by I.M. Pei. The sculpture garden is also a delight. There are so many wonderful exhibitions and works of art on display that it’s hard to pick a favorite. I did, however, love Thomas Cole’s The Voyage of Life. If you love museums, the National Gallery will take most of the day.

The next day started with a VIP tour of the United States Capitol by a staff member of my state congressional representative. From the spacious visitor center and Exhibition Hall, the tour traveled from the original entrance, Senate, and Supreme Court to the wondrous Capitol Rotunda and National Statuary Hall. The tour concluded with a visit to the House of Representatives Chamber (no cameras/cell phones were allowed). As all points in Washington, D.C. radiate from this point geographically and politically, it is here that you literally feel our republic in action.

From an architectural standpoint alone, the Library of Congress is well worth a visit. The Main Reading Room would compel even the most reluctant reader to pick up a book. I particularly enjoyed the Two Georges: Parallel Lives in an Age of Revolution exhibition. The exhibition contrasts two living legends who lived at the same time – George Washington and King George III.

Needless to say, a visit to the top of the Washington Monument reveals breathtaking views of D.C. From there, a visit to the solemnity of the World War II Memorial, followed by the Lincoln Memorial, was in order. One can’t help but be reflective and thankful when viewing President Abraham Lincoln’s statue. If it were not for Lincoln, there would not be a United States of America. Although I had to memorize the Gettysburg Address in grade school, the following excerpt from his speech, written over 150 years ago, still resonates today, “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” I know we can.

“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” As an American citizen (and for all those who aspire to be), that singular sentence in the Declaration of Independence forms the bedrock of this country. My visit to the National Archives the next day to view the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights was rightly an emotional one. For it was the authorship, execution, and adherence to these documents that established the United States. While it’s easy to take what we have here for granted if you’ve never traveled outside the country, I, for one, am both happy and thankful to see the sign “Welcome to the United States” when I return from an international trip.

For those who follow me on social media or know me personally, you know I love the world of James Bond. Therefore, a visit to the International Spy Museum was a must! When you first enter the lobby, you are greeted by the 1964 Aston Martin DB5 driven by Sean Connery in Goldfinger. That certainly gets you in the mood for spying! But this museum is much more than Bond. It takes you into the world of covert intelligence agencies around the world, with their stories, gadgets, and missions. The museum does an excellent job of covering spy networks in the OAS (precursor to the CIA) from WWII through the Cold War decades, and it features riveting exhibitions that test your abilities as a spy. Although I was there for 3.5 hours, I easily could have spent the majority of the day.

With my passion for NASA, space exploration, and all things aviation, day four was my visit to the National Air and Space Museum. Although I had previously visited the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia near Dulles International Airport, I had yet to visit the museum’s location on the Mall. As you enter the lobby, you’re greeted by the Friendship 7 space capsule that carried John Glenn—the first American to orbit Earth—to space. Just next to the capsule is the unflown Lunar Module from the Apollo era. You don’t need to walk far from the Lunar Module to see the iconic model of the Starship Enterprise from the 1960s TV series Star Trek. When you juxtapose the original Wright Flyer with the Apollo 11 command module, Columbia, in the same building, you can’t help but be in awe of what mankind can accomplish. In less than a century, we went from flying 120 feet at just over 6 miles per hour to landing a man on the Moon. In a museum like this, you can imagine what’s possible in the next 100 years.

My vacation to Washington, D.C. concluded the next day with a visit to the National Zoo. Having grown up on a farm, I became very familiar with a variety of animals. But certainly, the variety I lived with didn’t compare to what this magnificent zoo offered! From Giant Pandas, Asian elephants, Andean Bears, Brown Pelicans, and Siberian Tigers to over 2,000 other animals, the National Zoo has something for everyone. I particularly loved seeing the Beavers. When we lived on our farm, a family of Beavers turned our small brook into a large lake!

While my vacation to our nation’s capital may have come to an end, I left with a renewed appreciation for my country. While the Capitol represents our government, it is the museums that embody the very essence of the country. From history to art to science and all their interrelated fields, one leaves Washington, D.C., knowing more than when they arrived. The uniqueness of the United States should never be taken for granted. As the United States will soon celebrate its 250th anniversary, the founding fathers would be proud that, because of three words in the Constitution, the United States has withstood tyranny and triumphed, resulting in American exceptionalism. 

“We the People”

Library of Congress: By the People Webinar: Volunteer to Transcribe the American Revolution in Context. “Commemorate the 250th birthday of the United States through service! Join us for a webinar on Thursday, June 4, from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM EDT to learn about The American Revolution in Context, a project of the Library of Congress volunteer transcription program, By the People. Registration is […]

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

Her groundbreaking sea floor discovery was dismissed as 'girl talk.' But science proved her right.

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Preserving 135 years of media at the Library of Congress Packard Campus – WTOP News

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Preserving 135 years of media at the Library of Congress Packard Campus

By Matt Kaufax | [email protected]

February 10, 2026, 4:59 AM

Preserving 135 years of media at the Library of Congress Packard Campus

Imagine you had access to the original reels of film for your favorite movies of all time.

It’s better than streaming; it’s the world’s largest physical media collection, and it’s located right in the D.C. area.

In today’s episode of “Matt About Town,” we’re heading to Culpeper, Virginia, for an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the Library of Congress Packard Campus.

Also known as the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, the state-of-the-art 45-acre campus with mountain views is dedicated to collecting, preserving and providing access to the United States’ history and culture through 135-plus years of media.

The facility is a staggering achievement to media preservation, with one of its largest wings housing over 144,000 nitrate film reels in a storage vault. Built into the side of a hill, it comprises 124 individual climate-controlled pods (to prevent nitrate fires) and the largest collection of original studio negatives from giants like Paramount, Universal, Disney, Columbia Pictures, and more.

But it isn’t just movies.

The 415,000-square-foot space at Packard, complete with 90 miles of shelving, is also home to the most comprehensive repository of television programs, radio broadcasts, archival news footage, and other sound recordings in the world.

If all of this isn’t fascinating enough, you might also be surprised to learn that this facility didn’t start operating until 2007. When the original building in Culpeper was first constructed in 1969 during an era of Cold War nuclear paranoia, it was built as a cash vault by the Federal Reserve.

In the event of a nuclear disaster, the building was supposed to replenish the money supply of the entire Eastern Seaboard. There were even dormitories for up to 300 people to live inside the walls.

It was only after American corporate giant Hewlett Packard’s co-founder, David Packard, acquired the building from the government in the 1990s — then renovated and donated it back through his philanthropic organization — that the building transitioned into to what it is today.

In the coming weeks, we’re going to take you through our extensive exploration of Packard, giving you an in-depth look at what staff here are doing to preserve — and make available to the public — generations of history.

At Packard, they’re not just preserving films and media. They’re preserving the living proof of the very fabric of America, democracy, and the highs and lows all laid bare for the historical record.

Tune in every Tuesday and Thursday through March 10 on “Matt About Town” for episodes exploring every nook and cranny here. This all-access tour is one you won’t see anywhere else! Learn more about the Library of Congress’ Audio-Visual Conservation program online.

Hear “Matt About Town” first every Tuesday and Thursday on 103.5 FM! If you have a story idea you’d like Matt to cover, email him or chat with him on Instagram and TikTok. Check out all “Matt About Town” episodes here! Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Preserving 135 years of media at the Library of Congress Packard Campus – WTOP News

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

Trump’s deployments of National Guard troops reignite a 200-year-old Constitutional debate – PBS News

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By — Andrea Katz, The Conversation

Trump’s deployments of National Guard troops reignite a 200-year-old Constitutional debate

Politics Oct 22, 2025 1:15 PM EDT, This article originally appeared on The Conversation.

If you’re confused about what the law does and doesn’t allow the president to do with the National Guard, that’s understandable.

As National Guard troops landed in Portland, Oregon, in late September 2025, the state’s lawyers argued that the deployment was a “direct intrusion on its sovereign police power.”

READ MORE: U.S. appeals court says Trump can take command of Oregon National Guard troops, though deployment blocked for now

Days before, President Donald Trump, calling the city “a war zone,” had invoked a federal law allowing the government to call up the Guard during national emergencies or when state authorities cannot maintain order.

The conflict throws into relief a question as old as the Constitution itself: Where does federal power end and state authority begin?

One answer seems to appear in the 10th Amendment’s straightforward language: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This text is considered to be the constitutional “hook” for federalism in our democracy.

The founders, responding to anti-Federalist anxieties about an overbearing central government, added this language to emphasize that the new government possessed only limited powers. Everything else – including the broad “police power” to regulate health, safety, morals and general welfare – remained with the states.

Yet from the beginning, the text has generated plenty of confusion. Is the 10th Amendment merely a “truism,” as Justice Harlan Fiske Stone wrote in 1941 in United States v. Darby, restating the Constitution’s structure of limited powers? Or does it describe concrete powers held by the states?

Turns out, there’s no simple answer, not even from the nation’s highest court. Over the years, the Supreme Court has treated the 10th Amendment like the proverbial magician’s hat, sometimes pulling robust state powers from its depths, other times finding it empty.

10th Amendment’s broad range

The arguments over the 10th Amendment for almost 200 years have applied not only to the National Guard but to questions about how the federal and state governments share powers over everything from taxation to government salaries, law enforcement and regulation of the economy.

For much of the 19th century, the 10th Amendment remained dormant. The federal government’s weakness and limited ambitions, especially on the slavery question, meant that boundaries were rarely tested before the courts.

The New Deal era brought this equilibrium crashing down.

The Supreme Court initially resisted the expansion of federal power, striking down laws banning child labor in Hammer v. Dagenhart in 1918, setting a federal minimum wage in 1923 in Adkins v. Children’s Hospital, and offering farmers subsidies in U.S. v. Butler in 1937. All these decisions were based on the 10th Amendment.

WATCH: Conservative constitutional lawyer weighs in on Trump’s aggressive use of executive power

But this resistance wore down in the face of economic crisis and political pressure. By the time of the Darby case in 1941, which concerned the Fair Labor Standards Act and Congress’ power to regulate many aspects of employment, the court had relegated the 10th Amendment to “truism” status: The Amendment, wrote Stone, did nothing more than restate the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment.

The 1970s marked an unexpected revival. In the 1976 decision in National League of Cities v. Usery, a dispute over whether Congress could directly exercise control over minimum wage and overtime pay for state and local government employees, the court held that Congress could not use its commerce power to regulate state governments.

But that principle was abandoned nine years later, with the court doubling back on its position. Now, if the states wanted protection from federal overreach, they would have to seek it through the political process, not judicial intervention.

Yet less than a decade later, the court reversed course again. The modern federalism renaissance began in the ’90s with a pair of divided opinions stating that the federal government cannot force the states to enforce federal regulatory programs: this was the “anti-commandeering principle.”

The 10th Amendment’s meandering path

In recent decades, the court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, has invoked the amendment to protect state power in varied, even surprising contexts: states’ entitlement to federal Medicaid spending; state authority over running elections, despite patterns of voter exclusion; even legalization of sports gambling.

On the other hand, in 2024, Colorado was barred by the court from excluding Trump from the presidential ballot as part of its power to administer elections.

That brings us back to the present, where Trump has deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell protests against immigration enforcement, and bids to send them to Portland and Chicago as well.

From the point of view of federalism, two factors lend this conflict some constitutional complexity.

Continue/Read Original Article: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trumps-deployments-of-national-guard-troops-reignite-a-200-year-old-constitutional-debate

#10thAmendment #2025 #America #ConstitutionalCrisis #DemocraticCities #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #NationalGuard #OnlyBlueCities #Opinion #PBSNews #Politics #Resistance #Science #SCOTUS #StatesRights #Trump #TrumpAdministration #USConstitution #UnitedStates

No Kings protests: What to know as millions rally against Trump – Axios

Axios, Updated Oct 15, 2025 – Politics & Policy

What to know about Oct. 18 “No Kings” protests

• By April Rubin

 “No Kings” protest events planned for Oct. 18

Places with planned rallies, meetings or visibility events; As of Oct. 14, 2025

A map of the U.S. showing the locations of “No Kings” protest events planned for Oct. 18, 2025. There were more than 2,000 events planned in 1,700 cities as of Oct. 14, 2025.

No Kings protest organizers expect millions to gather across the nation on Saturday, Oct. 18 in an event Republicanlawmakers decry as “a hate America rally.”

Why it matters: The latest round of protests comes amid growing frustration about the ongoing government shutdown and widespread opposition to President Trump’s military crackdown on Democratic-led cities across America.

State of play: More than 2,500 events are planned across all 50 states as of Monday, organizers said.

• “Together, millions will send a clear and unmistakable message: we are a nation of equals, and our country will not be ruled by fear or force,” their statement said.
• Participating groups include the American Civil Liberties Union, American Federation of Teachers, 50501, Human Rights Campaign, Indivisible and MoveOn.

The other side: The recurring movement against the Trump administration has garnered sharp criticism from Republican lawmakers who say Democrats are protesting as a ploy during the government shutdown.

• “The Trump Administration is focused on stopping the scourge of left-wing violence plaguing American communities,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “Left-wing protestors can beclown themselves by lawfully protesting the alternate reality they live in, but violence or breaking the law will not be tolerated.”

What they’re saying: Republican leadership, including House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), called the protest “a hate America rally.”

• Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) said the National Guard will need to respond to protesters. “Hopefully it will be peaceful — I doubt it,” he said. The White House did not answer whether Trump plans to deploy National Guard troops to any protest sites Saturday.

Friction point: Johnson, in a Fox News appearance, said the protests were being put on by “the pro-Hamas wing and the Antifa people.”

• “It’s being told to us that they won’t be able to reopen the government until after that rally because they can’t face their rabid base,” he said after criticizing House Democrats.

Reality check: Johnson canceled a third week of House votes amid the ongoing shutdown.

• “The fact that they’re trying to smear millions and millions of Americans who are fed up with the dictatorial actions of the Trump administration as the reason why they themselves are unable to govern is just another demonstration of their own panic, their own desperation, and the fact that they know that they are on the losing end of this fight,” Leah Greenberg, co-founder of organizing group Indivisible, told Axios.

Zoom in: “Speaker Johnson is running out of excuses for keeping the government shut down,” No Kings organizers said.

He wrote that Republicans “spend their days sucking up to King Trump & demonizing peaceful protest just as some in America sought to appease King George III.”

“Instead of reopening the government, preserving affordable healthcare, or lowering costs for working families, he’s attacking millions of Americans who are peacefully coming together to say that America belongs to its people, not to kings.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said on Bluesky he looked forward to No Kings Day, saying the GOP was “the same kind of weasels who would’ve called George Washington & America’s revolutionaries ‘terrorists.'”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: No Kings protests: What to know as millions rally against Trump

#2025 #AgainstTrump #America #Axios #Cities #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #NoDictators #NoKings #NoNazis #Opinion #Peaceful #Politics #Protests #Rally #Resistance #Science #Technology #Trump #TrumpAdministration #USConstitution #UnitedStates

Civil Discourse – Are We the Nazis Now? -Joyce Vance

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

Are We the Nazis Now?

How do we meet this moment?

By Joyce Vance, Oct 13, 2025

It’s hard to watch. People being treated like they are less than human because of their perceived immigration status. Like this six-year-old girl.

In early October, federal agents with Border Patrol, the FBI, and ATF arrested 37 people in a raid on a Chicago apartment building at 7500 S. South Shore Drive. They banged on residents’ doors overnight, according to a report in the Chicago Sun Times, “pulling men, women and children from their apartments, some of them naked, residents and witnesses said.” A witness said she saw “agents dragging residents, including kids, out of the building without any clothes on and into U-Haul vans,” and that “kids were separated from their mothers.” DHS claimed the neighborhood was “a location known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates,” but offered no evidence in support and didn’t confirm that any of those arrested were members of the Venezuelan gang.

Earlier this month, at West Loop Elementary School in Chicago, Illinois, ICE was forced to release two sisters it pulled out of their car at a school pick up, because they have legal status under DACA. But that didn’t stop the masked agents, captured on video by a quick-thinking teacher, from surrounding the car and smashing its windows before dragging the two out. One of the sisters cried out her name and where she lived to bystanders, an apparent effort to prevent being “disappeared” into ICE custody.

Are We the Nazis Now? by Joyce Vance

How do we meet this moment?

Read on Substack

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Are We the Nazis Now? – Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

#2025 #America #AnneFrank #CivilDiscourse #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #ImmigrantChildren #ImmigrationAndCustomsEnforcementICE_ #JoyceVance #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Nazis #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #TreatmentByICE #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Concerns mount over increased violence among federal immigration agents – NPR

Immigration

Tackles, projectiles and gunfire: Many fear ICE tactics are growing more violent

October 13, 202512:57 PM ET

By Meg Anderson

There are countless videos on social media showing similar scenes. One, filmed by a photographer in Hyattsville, Md., shows a man pinned to the ground by two ICE officers. He pleads in Spanish and English for someone to help him.

During the incident, one of the officers drops his gun and fumbles for it. Then, he appears to point it at bystanders. Emily Covington, an assistant director in ICE’s Office of Public Affairs, told NPR in a statement that drawing a weapon can be used as a de-escalation tactic.

Another video, from Broadview, Ill., near Chicago, appears to show a man outside an ICE facility getting shot in the head with a pepper ball, a projectile filled with chemical irritants. That man, Pastor David Black, has sued the Trump administration.

Late last month, a local CBS reporter said a masked ICE agent fired a pepper ball at her car at that same facility, causing her to vomit for hours. The reporter, Asal Rezaei, said there was no protest happening at the time. Broadview Police are now investigating.

“These are just the tip of the iceberg,” says Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. “People being tackled, people getting pepper sprayed or tear gassed. We’ve seen people getting threatened. And we’ve seen at least two incidents involving gunfire.”

A majority of Americans do not approve of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics, according to a recent survey from The New York Times and Siena University. Yet in Chicago, immigrant advocate groups say federal immigration officers are escalating those tactics and becoming more violent.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Concerns mount over increased violence among federal immigration agents : NPR

#2025 #America #DonaldTrump #Education #FederalImmigrationViolence #Gunfire #Health #History #Ice #ICETactics #ImmigrationAndCustomsEnforcementICE_ #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #NationalPublicRadio #NPR #Opinion #Politics #Projectiles #Resistance #Science #Tackles #Takedowns #Technology #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates #ViolenceByICE #YouTube

A Prairie Home Companion: Status and Archives – A 2025 Update

A Prairie Home Companion: Status and Archives

A user today on Facebook asked about A Prairie Home Companion. It ended its original run on July 2, 2016, when Garrison Keillor hosted his final episode at the Hollywood Bowl after 42 years as host. The show continued under Chris Thile from October 2016 until 2020, when it was renamed “Live from Here” in December 2017 following allegations against Keillor.

However, Keillor continues to perform live stage shows under the Prairie Home Companion name, as he retained the trademark rights.

Current Status and Archives

Multiple comprehensive archives exist for accessing Prairie Home Companion episodes, though availability varies by time period:

Official Archives:

• Prairie Home Companion website (https://www.prairiehome.org) – Contains episodes primarily from 1996 onward with classic rebroadcasts
• Garrison Keillor’s official site (https://www.garrisonkeillor.com/radio-categories/prairie-home-archives) – Features classic episodes from the archives

Comprehensive Third-Party Archive: Good for Finding Episodes!

• A PHC Archive (https://aphcarchive.com) – A free, comprehensive archive specifically designed to fill gaps in the official sites, with detailed search capabilities and information covering the first 20+ years of the show that other sites lack

Additional Sources:

• Internet Archive (https://archive.org) – Contains various episodes, including shows from the 1980s
• YouTube channels – Garrison Keillor’s official YouTube channel features full episodes and segments, including recent performances (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCusGjo4R2lMZDV6MWnnYTBQ).
• Podcast platforms – “A Prairie Home Companion: News from Lake Wobegon” podcast features 329 episodes of Keillor’s signature monologue segments (https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/a-prairie-home-companion-news-3116/episodes)

The official Prairie Home site notes that their archive “only goes back to 1996ish” with “a few 1985 episodes on YouTube,” making the third-party PHC Archive particularly valuable for accessing the show’s complete history from its 1974 debut.

So yes, while there are no new shows in the traditional sense, there’s a wealth of archived content available online for fans who want to revisit the magic of Lake Wobegon and Garrison Keillor’s storytelling.

#2025 #America #Archives #Education #GarrisonKeillor #History #LakeWobegon #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #NationalPublicRadio #NPR #PHC #PrairieHomeCompanion #Technology #UnitedStates #Writing #YouTube

US federal government shutdown 2025 | The Guardian

US federal government shutdown 2025

The US government shut down on 1 October 2025 after Congress failed to reach a funding agreement by the midnight deadline.

Editor’s Note: Sharing this page. Keep up with the Shutdown 2025. The Guardian has great coverage!

11 October 2025

• Trump says military members will be paid despite government shutdown 15.53 EDT
• Democrats refuse to fold over shutdown as Republican outrage builds 09.00 EDT

10 October 2025

• US politics live with Shrai PopatAfter uproar, Pete Hegseth clarifies Qatari air force facility in Idaho is not a foreign base – as it happened Oct 10 2025 22.03 EDT
• White House announces federal worker layoffs as shutdown nears third week Oct 10 2025 21.44 EDT

9 October 2025

• Senate still deadlocked over shutdown as Trump reiterates threat to DemocratsSeventh round of votes fails to yield breakthrough while president threatens to cut funds for ‘Democrat programs’ Oct 9 2025 15.35 EDT

8 October 2025

• US politics live with Shrai PopatWhite House gives platform to conservative influencers to air grievances during ‘antifa roundtable’ – as it happened Oct 8 2025 22.13 EDT
• IRS to furlough nearly half its workforce due to government shutdown Oct 8 2025 17.24 EDT
• US shutdown deadlock deepens as senators reject competing bills Oct 8 2025 14.27 EDT
• US airport staffing shortages expected to cause more delays amid shutdown Oct 8 2025 12.14 EDT

• Democrats introduce bill to help federal workers cover childcare costs during shutdown Oct 8 2025 06.00 EDT
• Gold price tops $4,000 for first time as investors seek safe haven Oct 8 2025 05.20 EDT

Editor’s Note: The page has more days and information. Bookmark and follow.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: US federal government shutdown 2025 | The Guardian

#2025 #America #Coverage #DonaldTrump #Education #FederalGovernmentShutdown #GOP #Health #History #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #NewsCoverage #Opinion #Politics #Republicans #Resistance #Science #TheGuardian #Trump #TrumpAdministration #USFederalShutdown2025 #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

In Chicago hearing on National Guard deployment, federal judge appointed by Biden will hear arguments – Chicago Sun-Times

Donald Trump Politics Immigration

Federal judge hits Trump administration credibility in siding with city and state against National Guard deployment

Judge’s order bars ‘federalization and deployment of the National Guard of the United States within Illinois’ for at least 14 days.

By Jon Seidel and Tina Sfondeles Oct 9, 2025, 6:02pm PDT

For U.S. District Judge April Perry,

it all came down to credibility.

Should she believe local law enforcement officials, who say they have protests over President Donald Trump’s immigration campaign well in hand? Or Trump, whose aides claim a “brazen new form of hostility” targeting federal law enforcement had broken out in Illinois?

In the end, Perry concluded the Trump administration’s “perception of events” around Chicago “are simply unreliable.” She’d seen “no credible evidence that there is danger of rebellion in the state of Illinois,” nor that Trump “is unable … to execute the laws of the United States.”

Related

• Judge refuses to immediately block National Guard deployment to Illinois

And after a historic hearing that lasted more than three hours at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, the judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from “ordering the federalization and deployment of the National Guard of the United States within Illinois.”

Perry ruled orally from the bench and promised a written opinion Friday. The order is effective for two weeks, and Perry set a hearing for Oct. 22 to determine whether it should be extended for two more. Trump’s lawyers are sure to appeal in the meantime.

Gov. JB Pritzker reacted in a statement by saying, “Donald Trump is not a king — and his administration is not above the law.”

“Today, the court confirmed what we all know: There is no credible evidence of a rebellion in the state of Illinois. And no place for the National Guard in the streets of American cities like Chicago.”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: In Chicago hearing on National Guard deployment, federal judge appointed by Biden will hear arguments – Chicago Sun-Times

#14Days #2025 #America #AprilPerry #Chicago #ChicagoSunTimes #DistrictJudge #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Illinois #JBPritzker #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #Travel #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Social Security plans to make it harder to get disability benefits – The Washington Post – Exclusive

WP Exclusive

Trump plan would limit disability benefits for older Americans

Trump administration officials are considering eliminating age as a factor in deciding whether someone is capable of working.

Updated, October 5, 2025 at 4:58 p.m. EDT, today at 4:58 p.m. EDT, 9 min

By Meryl Kornfield and Lisa Rein

The Trump administration is preparing a plan that will make it harder for older Americans to qualify for Social Security disability payments, part of an overhaul of the federal safety net for poor, older and disabled people that could result in hundreds of thousands of people losing benefits, according to people familiar with the plans.

Currently, the Social Security Administration evaluates disability claims by considering age, work experience and education to determine if a person can adjust to other types of work. Older applicants, typically over 50, have a better chance of qualifying because age is treated as a limitation in adapting to many jobs.

But now officials are considering eliminating age as a factor entirely or raising the threshold to age 60, according to three people familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions. They also plan to modernize labor market data used to judge whether claimants can work, replacing an outdated jobs database that includes obsolete occupations like nut sorters and telephone quotation clerks, following a Washington Post investigation in 2022.

It is unclear exactly how many Americans could lose access to disability benefits under the proposed rule changes.

🏛️Following Politics

Jack Smalligan, senior policy fellow at the Urban Institute and a former Office of Management and Budget official through five administrations, wrote in a recent paper that if the proposed rule reduced eligibility for the disability program by 10 percent, 750,000 fewer people would receive benefits for all or part of the next decade. In addition, 80,000 fewer widows and children would receive benefits due to the loss in eligibility of a spouse or parent. That would lead to $82 billion less paid out in benefits over 10 years, Smalligan estimated.

Smalligan said research has shown that a majority of older Americans who apply for disability benefits don’t get another job. If the rule didn’t consider age as a factor, more older disabled workers would probably start taking early retirement benefits, significantly reducing their monthly benefit amount.

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

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Social Security plans to make it harder to get disability benefits – The Washington Post

#2025 #America #Disability #DonaldTrump #Education #HarderToGet #Health #History #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #Politics #Resistance #Science #SocialSecurity #SocialSecurityAdministration #TheWashingtonPost #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

September 25, 2025 – by Heather Cox Richardson

https://substack.com/session-attribution-frame

Letters from an American

September 25, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 25, 2025

Today, with the popularity of President Donald J. Trump and his administration dropping, Trump’s disastrous performance at the United Nations, the return of comedian Jimmy Kimmel to the airwaves, and the Tuesday’s election in Arizona of Democratic representative Adelita Grijalva, who will provide the final signature on a discharge petition to demand a floor vote in the House over releasing all the government files on convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the administration appears to be making a dramatic push to seize complete control of the government.

Last night, Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought tried to jam the Democrats into passing the Republicans’ continuing resolution to fund the government. Officials leaked a memo to Politico, Punchbowl News, and Axios—publications that focus on events concerning Capitol Hill—saying that if the Democrats refuse to pass the Republicans’ measure, the administration will try to fire, rather than furlough, large numbers of federal employees.

Such a move would be challenged in the courts, and the government has been forced to rehire many of the people it forced out earlier this year after those firings left agencies badly understaffed. But the threat is not idle; Vought is a Christian nationalist who has called for a “radical Constitutionalism” that demolishes the modern American state and replaces it with a powerful executive.

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) responded: “Listen Russ, you are a malignant political hack. We will not be intimidated by your threat to engage in mass firings. Get lost.” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a statement: “Donald Trump has been firing federal workers since day one—not to govern, but to scare. This is nothing new and has nothing to do with funding the government. These unnecessary firings will either be overturned in court or the administration will end up hiring the workers back, just like they did as recently as today.”

Trump appears focused on September 30, when the government funding crisis will hit, and the days after it. Although courts have ruled that he does not have the power to impose tariffs willy-nilly, today Trump announced new tariffs of 100% on pharmaceuticals, 50% on kitchen and bathroom cabinets, 30% on upholstered furniture, and 25% on “Heavy (Big!) Trucks” beginning on October 1. On social media, he claimed such tariffs were necessary “for National Security and other reasons.”

Today, James LaPorta of CBS News reported that the National Archives and Records Administration improperly released Democratic representative Mikie Sherrill’s full military records to an ally of her Republican opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, in the New Jersey governor’s race. The two candidates are tied, and Ciattarelli appears to be trying to link Sherrill to the 1994 Naval Academy cheating scandal involving more than 100 midshipmen.

Sherrill had an unblemished career in the Navy and as a midshipman, LaPorta notes. She did not turn in her cheating classmates, but she was never accused of cheating herself. The unredacted release of Sherrill’s records appears to violate the 1974 Privacy Act. Sherrill said: “That Jack Ciattarelli and the Trump administration are illegally weaponizing my records for political gain is a violation of anyone who has ever served our country. No veteran’s record is safe.”

While the National Archives maintained the release was a mistake and apologized for it, the administration’s influence in the Department of Justice tonight could not be explained away.

Days after Trump demanded that the Department of Justice move “now” to prosecute those he perceives to be his enemies, a federal grand jury has indicted former FBI director James Comey for allegedly lying to Congress and obstructing an investigation. Comey was an early casualty of Trump’s first administration, fired after he refused to kill the FBI investigation of the ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian operatives.

Over last weekend, Trump exploded at then–acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Erik Siebert, a career prosecutor, after Siebert concluded there was not enough evidence of a crime to charge Comey for allegedly lying to Congress or New York attorney general Letitia James for alleged mortgage fraud.

On Monday Trump replaced Siebert with White House aide and Trump’s former personal lawyer Lindsey Halligan, and yesterday three sources told Ken Dilanian and Carol Leonnig of MSNBC that they expected Halligan to try to get a grand jury to indict Comey before the five-year statute of limitations on lying to Congress runs out next Tuesday.

Editor’s Note: My emphasis below… –DrWeb

Tonight the DOJ delivered an indictment against Comey.

“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump,” Comey said tonight in a video. “But we…will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either. Somebody that I love dearly recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant, and she’s right, but I’m not afraid, and I hope you’re not either. I hope instead you are engaged, you are paying attention, and you will vote like your beloved country depends upon it, which it does. My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system. I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial and keep the faith.”

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

Continue/Read Original Article Here: September 25, 2025 – by Heather Cox Richardson

#2025 #America #DonaldTrump #Education #EnemiesList #FBIDirector #FormerFBI #Health #HeatherCoxRichardson #History #Indiced #JamesComey #LettersFromAnAmerican #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #Substack #Trump #TrumpAdministration #TrumpEnemies #UnitedStates

Trump 2.0 vs. the US Constitution, annotated – CNN

Trump 2.0 vs. the US Constitution, annotated

How the 47th president-elect is pushing the boundaries of the founding document

By Zachary B. Wolf, Curt Merrill and Way Mullery, CNN

Published: January 18, 2025

Unlike any other president, Donald Trump has tested the words and ideas in the literal text of the US Constitution, from the Preamble through the 27th Amendment.

There are multiple passages he has said or suggested he will ignore or reinterpret.

The president-elect wants to end birthright citizenship, even though it’s in the 14th Amendment. His pledge to use “impoundment” to save money runs afoul of the idea that the legislature has the power of the purse. He has mused about ending the federal income tax, groused about the Senate’s role in confirming appointees and joked about staying in power after his second term ends. But the Constitution is clear in what it does and does not allow.

As he enters the White House a second time, it’s worth reading the Constitution, again, with a highlighter, and through the lens of Trump’s promises and his plans.

Read the United States’ founding document along with us — from top to bottom — or use the dropdown menu to skip ahead to a specific article or amendment.

Editor’s Note: The article link shows a list of the U.S. Constitution, annotated by section or part, re: Trump 2.0. I could not include that link box in my re-posting. Use on the CNN page. Below is the truncated beginning on the text…

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

– Congress –

Section 1

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Section 2

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

The framers, by design, put the Congress and the House first in the Constitution because they wanted the legislature to drive the government. That’s not how things feel with today’s gridlocked Congress and powerful presidents.

For another line-by-line deconstruction of the Constitution with input from across the political spectrum, check out this one from the National Constitution Center.

No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

This reference to enslaved Americans being referred to as 3/5 of “free Persons” for counting purposes — a compromise between the northern and southern states at the time of the writing of the Constitution — was overwritten by the 13th and 14th Amendments. Also, Native Americans are now taxed and thus counted for apportionment.

The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies. The House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.

Trump is the only president in US history to face two impeachments, and the only impeached president to win a second term. He is unlikely to face impeachment so long as Republicans control the House, which they will at least until January 2027.

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

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Trump 2.0 vs. the US Constitution, annotated – CNN

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Amy Coney Barrett: A Deep Dive into the Supreme Court’s Conservative Pivot – A Special SCOTUS Series

Editor’s Note: Recently, I’ve considered a look at SCOTUS more in depth. It’s moving the law in right wing and conservative directions, and changing by fiat the power of the President, diminishing the power of Congress. This is the first article to examine the justices. The last in the series will talk about changes that should and need to be made to our top court.
–DrWeb

Amy Coney Barrett: A Deep Dive into the Supreme Court’s Conservative Pivot

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett has indeed emerged as a pivotal figure on the nation’s highest court since her controversial confirmation in October 2020. Her visibility and influence have grown significantly, particularly following her role in landmark decisions affecting abortion rights and other contentious social issues.

Background and Rise to the Court

Amy Vivian Coney Barrett, born January 28, 1972, graduated first in her class from Notre Dame Law School in 1997. She clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia, whose judicial philosophy of textualism and originalism she has embraced. After serving as a Notre Dame law professor and later as a federal appeals judge on the Seventh Circuit from 2017-2020, Trump nominated her to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat just 38 days before the 2020 election.

Her confirmation was historically contentious – she became the first Supreme Court justice in 150 years confirmed without any support from the minority party, passing by a 52-48 vote with all Democrats opposing. This partisan divide foreshadowed the significant role she would play in reshaping American jurisprudence.

Understanding Barrett’s Judicial Philosophy:
Key Terms Explained

Textualism

Textualism is a method of legal interpretation that focuses exclusively on the plain meaning of statutory and constitutional text as it would have been understood by ordinary readers at the time of enactment. Textualists like Barrett reject consideration of legislative intent, policy outcomes, or evolving social context, instead asking what a “reasonable person” would understand the words to mean in their historical context. As Justice Scalia, Barrett’s mentor, famously illustrated: when a law prohibits “using a firearm” in drug crimes, a textualist would interpret this as using the gun as a weapon, not trading it as barter—because that’s what guns are “normally used for.” While textualism promises objectivity and simplicity by focusing solely on text, critics argue it can oversimplify complex legal issues and ignore how language evolves over time.

Originalism

Originalism is the constitutional interpretation theory holding that the Constitution should be understood according to its “original public meaning”—what the text meant to ordinary readers when it was ratified, not what modern interpreters think it should mean today. Unlike “living constitution” approaches that allow constitutional meaning to evolve with changing times, originalists like Barrett believe constitutional text has a fixed meaning that can only be changed through the formal amendment process, not judicial reinterpretation. This philosophy often leads to conservative outcomes because it anchors legal interpretation in 18th and 19th-century understandings of rights and government power. Barrett has explicitly embraced this approach, arguing that “constitutional text means what it did at the time it was ratified and that this original public meaning is authoritative.” Together, textualism and originalism form the intellectual foundation for Barrett’s approach to cases involving abortion, same-sex marriage, and other contemporary constitutional questions.

Key Rulings and Voting Record

Abortion Rights: The Dobbs Decision

Barrett was indeed central to overturning Roe v. Wade in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. In her forthcoming book “Listening to the Law,” she defends this vote, arguing that Roe “bypassed the preferences of the American populace” and that abortion rights were never “deeply entrenched in American history.” She maintains that the court’s role is “to respect choices that people have agreed to, not tell them what they should agree to.”

Same-Sex Marriage: The Next Target?

Barrett’s potential role in reversing same-sex marriage appears well-founded given her judicial record and stated philosophy. Barrett has connections to religious organizations with anti-LGBTQ+ positions and previously endorsed a 2015 letter affirming traditional marriage as “rooted in the unwavering commitment of a man and a woman.” During her confirmation hearings, she controversially referred to LGBTQ+ individuals as having “sexual preference,” later apologizing.

Several Republican-led state legislatures are currently pushing resolutions urging the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage. In her new book, Barrett distinguishes abortion from other rights like marriage, suggesting the “complicated moral debate” around abortion differentiates it from rights that enjoy broader public support.

Barrett’s Growing Independence and Influence

Despite her conservative credentials, Barrett has demonstrated surprising independence from the court’s conservative bloc in some cases. Legal observers note she’s “striking Sandra Day O’Connor’s path” by being “independent of her conservative brethren on some important questions.” This has made her a justice to watch, as Chief Justice Roberts may increasingly need to negotiate with her for crucial fifth votes.

Her voting statistics reflect her conservative alignment but also show strategic positioning: in the 2023-2024 term, she was in the majority 92% of the time, and averaged 91% majority alignment since joining the court.

Her New Book: “Listening to the Law”

Barrett’s memoir “Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution” was released on September 9, 2025. The book provides unprecedented insight into Supreme Court operations and her judicial philosophy. Beyond defending the Dobbs decision, she reveals personal struggles with cases she found “distasteful to cast,” particularly regarding capital punishment.

Barrett’s Writings and Academic Work

Barrett’s notable works include:

• “Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution” (September 2025) – her memoir
• Numerous law review articles during her Notre Dame professorship (2002-2017)
• Federal court opinions from her Seventh Circuit tenure (2017-2020)
• Supreme Court opinions since 2020

Research Note: For comprehensive access to her academic writings, researchers should check Notre Dame Law School’s faculty repository, legal databases like Westlaw or LexisNexis, and Google Scholar for open-access pieces.

The Broader Implications

Barrett’s position as the court’s potential swing vote on social issues makes her arguably the most consequential justice for the future of American civil rights. At 53, she could serve for decades, shaping law long after current political dynamics change. Her approach of distinguishing between different types of rights based on historical grounding and public acceptance suggests a methodical strategy for rolling back progressive precedents.

Barrett appears “key” to potential rulings on same-sex marriage, given both her stated judicial philosophy and the current legal landscape where conservative activists are actively challenging Obergefell. Her role in the conservative majority’s systematic dismantling of liberal precedents positions her as one of the most watched and influential justices in modern Supreme Court history.

Sources

1. Wikipedia Contributors. “Amy Coney Barrett.” Wikipedia, May 7, 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Coney_Barrett
2. CNN. “Exclusive: Justice Amy Coney Barrett defends overturning Roe v. Wade and reveals Supreme Court dynamics in new book.” CNN Politics, September 2, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/02/politics/amy-coney-barrett-book-supreme-court-abortion
3. National Women’s History Museum. “Amy Coney Barrett.” Women’s History Museum, August 31, 2021. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/amy-coney-barrett
4. Ballotpedia. “Amy Coney Barrett.” Ballotpedia, September 28, 2020. https://ballotpedia.org/Amy_Coney_Barrett
5. Reuters. “US Supreme Court’s Barrett defends overturning abortion right in new book.” Reuters Legal, September 2, 2025. https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-courts-barrett-defends-overturning-abortion-right-new-book-2025-09-02/
6. Newsweek. “What Amy Coney Barrett Has Said on Gay Marriage as Republicans Push to End Same-Sex Marriage.” Newsweek, March 14, 2025. https://www.newsweek.com/what-amy-coney-barrett-has-said-gay-marriage-republicans-push-end-2044855
7. Alliance for Justice. “USA Today: How Amy Coney Barrett emerged as the Supreme Court Justice to Watch.” Alliance for Justice, July 10, 2024. https://afj.org/article/usa-today-how-amy-coney-barrett-emerged-as-the-supreme-court-justice-to-watch/
8. Reagan Foundation. “A Conversation and Book Signing with Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett.” Reagan Foundation Events, August 31, 2025. https://www.reaganfoundation.org/events/a-conversation-and-book-signing-with-amy-coney-barrett
9. Justia. “Justice Amy Coney Barrett.” Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center, October 26, 2020. https://supreme.justia.com/justices/amy-coney-barrett/
10. Newsweek. “Amy Coney Barrett Reveals Her ‘Distasteful’ Supreme Court Vote.” Newsweek, September 3, 2025. https://www.newsweek.com/amy-coney-barrett-supreme-court-distasteful-vote-2124025
11. New York Court Watcher. “Splinters in the 6-3 Supreme Court (Part 1: Amy Coney Barrett).” New York Court Watcher, December 30, 2024. http://www.newyorkcourtwatcher.com/2024/12/splinters-in-6-3-supreme-court-part-1.html
12. Newsweek. “Amy Coney Barrett Says ‘Rights to Marry’ Are Different From Abortion.” Newsweek, September 2, 2025. https://www.newsweek.com/amy-coney-barrett-abortion-supreme-court-decision-2123359
13. Library of Congress. “Justice Amy Coney Barrett.” 2025 National Book Festival, July 7, 2025. https://www.loc.gov/events/2025-national-book-festival/authors/item/no2020054095/justice-amy-coney-barrett/
14. Empirical SCOTUS. “The Real A.C.B.” Empirical SCOTUS, March 31, 2025. https://empiricalscotus.com/2025/04/01/the-real-a-c-b/
15. Barnes & Noble. “Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution by Amy Coney Barrett.” Barnes & Noble, August 31, 2025. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/listening-to-the-law-amy-coney-barrett/1147168709
16. Cornell Law School. “Textualism.” Wex Legal Information Institute, July 24, 2016. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/textualism
17. Wikipedia Contributors. “Textualism.” Wikipedia, November 9, 2005. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textualism
18. Pacific Legal Foundation. “Originalism vs. Textualism.” Pacific Legal Foundation, December 13, 2023. https://pacificlegal.org/originalism-vs-textualism-vs-living-constitutionalism/
19. EBSCO Research Starters. “Textualism.” EBSCO Research Starters – Law, October 31, 2020. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/law/textualism

Article researched and compiled September 6, 2025

#2025 #AbortionRights #AI #America #AmyConeyBarrett #AntoninScalia #artificialIntelligence #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Justices #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Marriage #Opinion #Perplexity #Politics #Reading #Resistance #SameSexMarriage #Science #SCOTUS #Trump #TrumpAdministration #USSupremeCourt #UnitedStates

A Really Well Insulated Attic

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

A Really Well Insulated Attic

By Joyce Vance, Sep 04, 2025

“If the entire foundation falls out from under your house, it does no good to have a really well-insulated attic,” the judge said. “It sure would be nice if someone had our backs.” An anonymous federal judge made that comment to NBC News in a remarkable piece that published this morning.

The attic they are referring to is the U.S. Supreme Court. A Court that is increasingly viewed in some corners as having abandoned the role Article III of the Constitution assigns to it, to act as a check and balance on the executive branch. But the concerns the judges expressed were about the process the Supreme Court is using to make decisions. The reporting was not an inquiry into either the substance of the high court’s rulings or the politics behind it all.

It’s all about the shadow docket, a term you’re familiar with if you read Civil Discourse. It’s a slightly snarky term coined by legal academics to refer to the Court’s emergency docket, which is used for time-sensitive issues, like last-minute requests to stay executions in death penalty cases. The Court also hears appeals involving emergency civil relief on this docket. That means that cases where pro-democracy lawyers seek injunctions to block some of the most egregious steps this administration is taking land, with increasing frequency, on the shadow docket, and that’s where they get decided.

But these cases aren’t like the cases on the Supreme Court’s regular docket, the ones that get fully briefed, orally argued, and then decided on the merits in carefully crafted, lengthy opinions that fully set out the decision and the legal basis for it. This kind of shadow docket ruling happens early in a case, and the decision, as in the birthright citizenship cases where the Court rejected the use of nationwide injunctions to obtain relief but didn’t weigh in on whether Trump could erase birthright citizenship from the Constitution, are on procedural issues, not the substantive merits of a case. The decisions are typically unexplained and unsigned. There’s usually no opinion. Maybe you get a couple of paragraphs. Sometimes a stinging dissent. But there is very little basis for understanding why the court ruled the way it did and applying it in the lower courts.

This is frustrating for us. We’ve had this experience in a number of cases. It happened when the Supreme Court signed off on letting the Trump administration deport noncitizens to third countries (countries other than their country of origin), desperately unsafe places like South Sudan. It happened when the Court okayed DOGE’s foray into Americans’ confidential data held by Social Security. The Court let Trump fire members of independent agencies.

Apparently, it’s frustrating for judges in lower courts as well. After all, they are being called upon to apply the Supreme Court’s decisions. Shadow docket rulings are precedent that lower courts must follow. But how do you apply something when there is no explanation for why it happened? That’s the position the lower courts are in and it’s what led 12 federal judges to take the unprecedented step of speaking anonymously to an NBC reporter about what’s going on at the Supreme Court.

The reporting characterized it like this:

“Lower court judges are handed contentious cases involving the Trump administration. They painstakingly research the law to reach their rulings. When they go against Trump, administration officials and allies criticize the judges in harsh terms. The government appeals to the Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority.

And then the Supreme Court, in emergency rulings, swiftly rejects the judges’ decisions with little to no explanation.”

The judges had a deeper criticism too. One that is unique to the time of the Trump administration, where the president and his cronies have attacked judges who rule against the president’s policies or against him on personal matters, often placing those judges in the crosshairs of his supporters. As one judge put it, “A short rebuttal from the Supreme Court, they argue, makes it seem like they did shoddy work and are biased against Trump.” Trump cronies like Stephen Miller have accused judges who rule against the administration of engaging in a judicial coup and there have been calls for their impeachment. One judge said that the Supreme Court “is effectively endorsing Miller’s claims that the judiciary is trying to subvert the presidency.”

This unique criticism of the Supreme Court from lower court judges comes as the Court has granted 17 of 23 emergency requests made by the administration, asking it to undo lower court decisions on an emergency basis. The NBC report concluded that five of the 17 cases were decided without any substantive reasoning to back them up and seven of the others had less than three pages of explanation. And we’re talking here about highly important decisions about the scope of presidential power. Supreme Court decisions routinely exceed 100 pages.

Continue/Read Original Article: https://joycevance.substack.com/p/a-really-well-insulated-attic

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On Politics: Why Trump wants to meet Putin

August 13, 2025

Trump’s Washington

How President Trump is changing government, the country and its politics.

Good evening. Tonight, our veteran national security correspondent, David Sanger, guides us through the stakes of President Trump’s upcoming summit with Vladimir Putin. We’re also looking at how the administration’s science funding cuts will affect research into health care disparities, and how Trump is exerting his influence over culture. We’ll start with the headlines.

• A federal appeals court ruled that the Trump administration can withhold billions in funding intended for foreign aid groups.
• Europe’s leaders say they’ve agreed with Trump on a strategy for his talks with Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, on Friday.
• The Trump administration urged a federal court to uphold its sweeping global tariffs or risk an economic depression. Experts dispute the severity of that claim.
• Trump’s deployment of federal troops in Washington has begun. Here’s what it looks like.

The meeting on Friday will be the first for an American president since the Western world isolated Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. New York Times photographs by Doug Mills and Nanna Heitmann

At stake in Alaska: two egos, and a continent’s future

by Jess Bidgood and David E. Sanger

There is nobody with more confidence in President Trump’s deal-making abilities than Trump himself.

Yet, as his Friday meeting in Alaska with President Vladimir Putin of Russia draws near, he and his top aides are lowering expectations, suggesting it’s not Trump’s job to make peace between Moscow and Ukraine and calling the summit little more than a “listening exercise.”

Statements like that belie the enormous stakes of the first meeting between Trump and Putin since the Russian invasion, particularly for the parties who aren’t expected to be present, which includes the leadership of Ukraine and of the European nations that have been living with the war on their doorstep. For Trump, though, the motivation is personal — it’s a chance to reset a relationship he has long boasted about but has lately become rocky, while bringing his personal brand of deal-making to the world’s biggest stage.

There’s a lot going on here. So I called David Sanger, who has covered the White House and national security for decades and who has written books about superpower conflict, before he boarded a series of flights to Anchorage earlier today.

He walked me through the calculus of risk and reward around this meeting — and why Putin can claim a modest win before it even starts.

As you’ve written, it used to be normal for an American president to meet with the Russian leader. George W. Bush met with Putin roughly two dozen times. Joe Biden met him only once, in 2021. But Trump’s meeting will be the first for an American president since the Western world isolated Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. What does he stand to gain from it?

Trump sees himself as a peacemaker, and this is tied up very much in his oft-expressed desire to win the Nobel Peace Prize, which he usually combines with some kind of comment to suggest that the Nobel Committee would never give it to him.

He has taken credit for a cease-fire between India and Pakistan, although the Indians have a different version of that story. He took a direct role in a peace pledge signed between Armenia and Azerbaijan, at the White House, and there have been other regional conflicts in which he’s played an important role. The big ones, though, have evaded him.

Those, of course, are the Israel-Hamas war and the Russian war with Ukraine, which he famously declared that he would solve in 24 hours, on the basis of his long and, in his view, respectful relationship with Putin. He has now come to question whether that relationship is what he thought it was, or at least what he portrayed it as, because Putin has held a series of perfectly friendly, constructive phone calls with him and then continued on the same battle plan that he was on before, with considerable recent success.

If the president comes out of Alaska without an immediate or imminent cease-fire plan, I think it’s going to be difficult for him to portray this as a win. But a cease-fire alone won’t be enough.

Who has the most at stake here?

The country with the most at stake, of course, is Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who wasn’t invited. The second-most at stake is President Trump and the countries that make up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. Let me explain.

For Ukraine, the risk is that Trump will push for something he’s been referring to as a “land swap.” He doesn’t say that Russia would simply get the land that it has already taken militarily, which would be problematic enough, because it would reward Moscow and Putin for invading a sovereign state.

Trump’s use of the phrase “swaps” leaves you with the impression that he might be willing to award the Russians territory that they have not gained militarily, in return for something else.

Tell us about the risks for Trump.

The big risk for Trump is that whatever comes out of Alaska is just a delaying action. Putin may calculate that what he needs most is a relaxation of sanctions, a reopening of trade and time to rebuild his force so that a few years from now, he can attempt a re-invasion of the rest of Ukraine and use the territory he’s gained as a launchpad to drive toward Kyiv. That’s a huge risk, and the Ukrainians are rightly worried about it.

To forestall that, the Europeans and Zelensky are insisting on security guarantees and continued arms shipments to Ukraine, as well as making sure that Trump doesn’t make any concessions about where NATO forces can be deployed in Eastern Europe. All of those issues are as important — and over the long term, perhaps more important — than where you draw the boundaries between Russia and Ukraine.

And there’s one more risk for NATO. Will Putin use this meeting to drive a wedge between Trump and the NATO allies? That is Putin’s greatest dream.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: On Politics: Why Trump wants to meet Putin

Original article: View source

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Opinion | The America We Knew Is Rapidly Slipping Away – The New York Times

Opinion, By Thomas L. Friedman

The America We Knew Is Rapidly Slipping Away

Aug. 4, 2025

Listen to this article · 7:12 min Learn more

By Thomas L. Friedman, Opinion Columnist

Of all the terrible things Donald Trump has said and done as president, the most dangerous one just happened on Friday. Trump, in effect, ordered our trusted and independent government office of economic statistics to become as big a liar as he is.

He fired Erika McEntarfer, the Senate-confirmed head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for bringing him economic news he did not like, and in the hours immediately following, the second most dangerous thing happened: The senior Trump officials most responsible for running our economy — people who in their private businesses never would have contemplated firing a subordinate who brought them financial data they did not like — all went along for the ride.

What they should have said to Trump is this: “Mr. President, if you don’t reconsider this decision — if you fire the top labor bureau statistician because she brought you bad economic news — how will anyone in the future trust that office when it issues good news?” Instead, they immediately covered for him.

As The Wall Street Journal pointed out, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer had actually gone on Bloomberg TV early Friday and declared that even though the jobs report that had just been released was revised downward for May and June, “we’ve seen positive job growth.” But as soon as she got the news hours later that Trump had fired the very B.L.S. director who reports to her, she wrote on X: “I agree wholeheartedly with @POTUS that our jobs numbers must be fair, accurate, and never manipulated for political purposes.”

As The Journal asked: “So were the jobs data that were ‘positive’ in the morning rigged by the afternoon?” Of course not.

The moment I heard what Trump had done, I had a flashback. It was January 2021, and it had just been reported that Trump, after losing the 2020 election, had tried to pressure Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find” him enough votes — exactly 11,780, Trump said — to overturn the presidential election and even threatened him with “a criminal offense” if he didn’t. The pressure came during an hourlong telephone call, according to an audio recording of the conversation.

The difference, though, is that back then there was something called a Republican official with integrity. And so Georgia’s secretary of state did not agree to fabricate votes that did not exist. But that species of Republican official seems to have gone completely extinct in Trump’s second term. So Trump’s rotten character is now a problem for our whole economy.

Going forward, how many government bureaucrats are going to dare to pass along bad news when they know that their bosses — people like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; the director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett; Labor Secretary Chavez-DeRemer; and the U.S. trade representative, Jamieson Greer — will not only fail to defend them but will actually offer them up as a sacrifice to Trump to keep their jobs?

Shame on each and every one of them — particularly on Bessent, a former hedge fund manager, who knows better and did not step in. What a coward. As Bessent’s predecessor, Janet Yellen, the former Treasury secretary and also the former chair of the Federal Reserve — and a person with actual integrity — told my Times colleague Ben Casselman of the B.L.S. firing: “This is the kind of thing you would only expect to see in a banana republic.”

It is important to know how foreigners are looking at this. Bill Blain, a London-based bond trader who publishes a newsletter popular among market experts called Blain’s Morning Porridge, wrote on Monday: “Friday, Aug. 1 might go down in history as the day the U.S. Treasury market died. There was an art to reading U.S. data. It relied on trust. Now that is broken — if you can’t trust the data, what can you trust?”

He then went on to imagine how his Porridge newsletter will sound in May 2031. It will begin, he wrote, with “a link to a release from Trump’s Ministry of Economic Truth, formerly the U.S. Treasury: ‘Under the leadership of President Trump, the U.S. economy continues to grow at record speed. Payrolls data from the Ministry of Truth, a subsidiary of Truth Social, show full employment across America. Tensions in the inner cities have never been so low. All recent graduates have found highly paid jobs across America’s expanding manufacturing sector, causing many large companies in Trump Inc to report significant labor shortages.’”

If you think this is far-fetched, you clearly have not been following the foreign policy news, because this kind of tactic — the tailoring of information to fit Trump’s political needs — has already been deployed in the intelligence field.

In May the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, fired two top intelligence officials who oversaw an assessment that contradicted Trump’s assertions that the gang Tren de Aragua was operating under the direction of the Venezuelan regime. Their assessment undermined the dubious legal rationale Trump invoked — the rarely used 1798 Alien Enemies Act — to allow the suspected gang members to be thrown out of the country without due process.

And now this trend toward self-blinding is spreading to further corners of the government.

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

Continue/Read Original Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/opinion/columnists/friedman-trump-labor-firing.html

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National Science Foundation staffers express concerns about ‘politically motivated and legally questionable’ Trump actions – The Hill

Energy & Environment

National Science Foundation staffers express concerns about ‘politically motivated and legally questionable’ Trump actions

by Rachel Frazin – 07/22/25 1:25 PM ET

Employees of the National Science Foundation (NSF) are going public with concerns about “politically motivated and legally questionable” actions by the Trump administration related to their agency.

Their concerns range from mass firings by the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency to interference with the grant process. 

In particular, the employees allege that for grants “a covert and ideologically driven secondary review process by unqualified political appointees is now interfering with the scientific merit-based review system.”

The accusation and others are detailed in a letter addressed to Rep. Zoe Lofgren (Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. Lofgren said at a press conference that the letter was being submitted to her office as “a protected whistleblower disclosure.”

It was signed by 149 staffers, virtually all of whom signed either anonymously or whose names were redacted in the version of the letter that was made public on Tuesday.

The NSF is an independent science agency that supports scientific research across various fields including biology, engineering, computer science and geoscience.

The agency declined to comment on the letter.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5413880-national-science-foundation-nsf-trump-grants-doge/

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The online activists trying to stop ICE from making arrests – The Washington Post

Immigration

The online activists trying to stop ICE from making arrests

The Trump administration claims sites tracking immigration officers are putting law enforcement at risk. The creators say they’re helping shield people from a modern-day “Gestapo.”

Updated, July 20, 2025 at 10:09 a.m. EDT, today at 10:09 a.m. EDT, 12 min

By Robert Klemko

Two decades ago, Sherman Austin decided the life of an internet activist was no longer worth the trouble. He’d landed in federal prison at 20 years old after investigators found instructions on how to make a bomb on a website he hosted. After a year behind bars, Austin retired his self-taught coding skills.

Parisa Firouzabadi and Pouria Pourhosseinhendabad allege that ICE officers represented themselves as police in a ruse to get them out of their apartment and arrest them. (Alex Brandon / AP)

He found work as a low-voltage electrician in Long Beach, trained in mixed martial arts and started a family.Then President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign roiled the Los Angeles region. Austin thought of his high school-aged children and the prospect of masked, anonymous federal officers entering their school to make arrests.

The community would need to be alerted if that happened, he thought, so undocumented people could escape and less vulnerable people might show up and protest.After several late-night coding marathons, Austin launched StopICE.net, which invites people to report sightings of suspected federal officers and notifies users who sign up for alerts.

The network now boasts over 470,000 subscribers nationwide. It is one of dozens of sites that have launched in recent months as both undocumented immigrants and many U.S. citizens grow alarmed at the scale of Trump’s deportation campaign and the aggressive tactics officers are using to detain people.

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

Continue/Read Original Article Here: The online activists trying to stop ICE from making arrests – The Washington Post

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: Meet your new national police force – CNN What Matters

: Meet your new national police force

By Zackary B. Wolf

The agency of mask-wearing officers who aren’t afraid to smash windows, detain lawmakers and pluck nonviolent undocumented immigrants off the street is about to become the best-funded federal police force.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has already been acting with impunity during President Donald Trump’s second term.

Get used to ICE

Video of agents on horseback and in armored personnel vehicles in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles is striking both for its demonstration of militarized power and for the total inability of the city’s Mayor Karen Bass to do anything about it.

“They need to leave and they need to leave right now,” she told reporters on the scene Monday.

But Trump administration officials feel no need to listen to local authorities in a city like Los Angeles.

“Better get used to us now, because this going to be normal very soon,” El Centro Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino told Fox News on Monday, responding to Bass.

That new normal may come as a shock to Americans unused to a federal national police force operating inside the country.

The megabill Trump signed last week will elevate ICE in the American consciousness and on American streets.

A flood of cash

ICE will have more funding in the coming years than any other federal law enforcement agency, according to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at pro-immigrant American Immigration Council.

The new law allocates $75 billion for ICE through 2029 to order as many as 10,000 new agents and to build detention facilities for more than 100,000 additional people.

“It makes ICE a higher-funded law enforcement agency than the entire FBI, ATF, DEA, US Marshals Service and Bureau of Prisons combined,” Reichlin-Melnick explained, after averaging that $75 billion across the next four years, more than doubling ICE’s budget in each of those years.

A new part of American life

With all that money and the OK to hire new agents, ICE will become even more visible.

“Most people in the United States are going to experience immigration enforcement for the first time in their lives,” predicted David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.

The spectacle will be the point

The future Bier foresees looks like this:

“US citizens being interrogated on the streets about their citizenships; ICE agents in apartment buildings knocking down doors; National Guard troops on the streets blocking traffic. At your workplace, your home, your neighborhood, your park, in a very visible way and intentionally so,” he said.

Making raids and actions as visible as possible may be designed to scare immigrants out of the country and deter anyone who might otherwise come.

Bier also anticipates a “mad dash to spend all of this money in the next three years,” before the next presidential election.

No longer primarily targeting violent criminals

Already, the pace and intensity of ICE’s actions have increased.

There was a major spike in the number of ICE arrests in June, to more than 34,000, according to data compiled by the Syracuse University immigration researcher Austin Kocher. At the same time, the number of detentions has risen to more than 50,000.

The profile of the detained population has also changed, according to Kocher. When Trump took office, most detainees had a criminal conviction. Now, a third of detainees may have only a civil immigration violation.

And most of the arrests are taking place inside the country rather than at the border, according to Kocher.

Corners will have to be cut

As ICE begins a hiring and construction frenzy, look for mistakes to be made, according to Garrett Graff, who has written about a similar effort to quickly tighten border security with new border agents after 9/11. At that time, agencies, including ICE, were reorganized under the now-massive Department of Homeland Security.

“What happens when a law enforcement agency at any level grows too rapidly is well-documented,” he wrote in his Doomsday Scenario newsletter. “Hiring standards fall, training is cut short, field training officers end up being too inexperienced to do the right training, and supervisors are too green to know how to enforce policies and procedures well.”

There were ultimately stories about corruption and agents recruited by drug cartels.

Now there could be “a tidal wave of applicants who are specifically attracted by the rough-em-up, masked secret police tactics, no-holds-barred lawlessness that ICE has pursued since January,” Graff wrote.

ICE agents operate outside of the normal judicial system

Immigration enforcement is not criminal law enforcement, which means agents don’t have to adhere to the standards of FBI agents or local law enforcement.

“You get an agency which is primarily oriented at non-citizens, but also authorized to arrest citizens at the same time for certain violations of law,” Reichlin-Melnick said.

ICE agents have also operated intentionally in anonymity, an adjustment for anyone who expects law enforcement to identify themselves.

The masks frequently worn by agents make ICE seem like the type of secret police that operates in authoritarian regimes. But they are apparently meant to protect agents from doxxing.

“I’m sorry if people are offended by them wearing masks, but I’m not going to let my officers and agents go out there and put their lives on the line, and their family on the line, because people don’t like what immigration enforcement is,” said ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons during a press conference in Boston in June.

Trump officials also seem ready to arrest local officials if it comes to that. Border czar Tom Homan said anyone, including local and state elected officials, could be arrested by ICE.

“You can protest if you want; you have that First Amendment right,” he told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in June. “But when you cross the line of putting your hands on an ICE officer, impeding our enforcement operations, knowingly harboring and concealing illegal alien, that’s a crime.”

ICE will also begin looking to detain and deport people who committed no crime. Entering the US illegally is a civil offense, which is certainly deportable. But the Trump administration has also moved to remove the legal status of literally millions of migrants, according to Bier.

It has moved to revoke temporary protective status for multiple groups of migrants from Central and South America, including Cubans, Venezuelans, Haitians and Nicaraguans.

The Trump administration is now primed to turbocharge efforts to denaturalize, or take citizenship away from, people who immigrated legally to the US.

Bier said the administration will continue looking for new groups to deport.

“The idea that they will ever be satisfied with the number of deportations I think is just preposterous,” he said.

Source Links: CNN What Matters https://www.cnn.com/newsletters/what-matters

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Le renvoi brutal d'une icône sans explication. Carla Hayden, 1ère femme et personne afro-américaine à occuper le poste de #bibliothécaire du Congrès aux US a été la cible d’un groupe conservateur militant l’accusant de promouvoir des contenus radicaux #CarlaHayden #LibraryOfCongress #Diversité‍ #LibertéIntellectuelle #LeadershipFéminin #Bibliothèques

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National Recording Preservation Board

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#Books including “To Kill a Mockingbird,”the novel by #HarperLee about #racism in the Depression-era South, were purged from #schools run by the #Defense Dept, acc/to a lawsuit filed by the #ACLU.
The #LibraryOfCongress, which describes itself as the world’s largest #library, is home to millions of items, w/collections of books on foreign languages & world history, as well as music, films & newspapers. It serves as the #research arm of #Congress & is open to the public.
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