#libraryofcongress — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #libraryofcongress, aggregated by home.social.
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"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 -
AI companies are scanning and destroying rare books.
Some might have been the last copy.
And the Library of Congress can't save them. Read why on Plain Meaning:
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Library of Congress: New Online at the Library of Congress: July 2026. A list of headers: George and Ira Gershwin Treasures, two new Community Collections Grant recipients, New foreign legal gazettes, world newspapers, and more, Silent film score transcriptions now available, New old news from Rhode Island, New onsite-only digital content, New web archives now available.
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/07/22/new-online-at-the-library-of-congress-july-2026-library-of-congress/ -
Library of Congress: Remembering the Past, Preserving the Present: The America 250 Semiquincentennial Web Archive. “The America 250 Semiquincentennial Web Archive documents how Americans are commemorating and reflecting on the nation’s 250th anniversary. In this interview, Malea Walker discusses how the collection evolved from a project focused on government websites into a broader effort to […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/07/06/remembering-the-past-preserving-the-present-the-america-250-semiquincentennial-web-archive-library-of-congress/ -
Mr Jefferson's Library (5 part series)
Michael Goldfarb visits the Library of Congress and Thomas Jefferson's home at Monticello in Virginia to see how Jefferson's reading shaped the beginnings of American history.
#MichaelGoldfarb
#LibraryOfCongress
#ThomasJefferson
#Monticello#BBCRadio4 #BookOfTheWeek #BBCBOTW #BBCBookOfTheWeek
(15 minute episodes) (very fast reading presentation style)
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Congress Just Rushed Through A Disastrous Copyright Office Overhaul
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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.
USS New Jersey.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.
View from the Capitol Reflecting Pool.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.
Neoclassical rotunda of the National Gallery of Art.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.
United States Capitol rotunda with the fresco The Apotheosis of Washington.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.
The Great Hall in the Library of Congress.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.
The view from the top of the Washington Monument.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.
1964 Aston Martin DB5 at the International Spy Museum.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.
The Apollo 11 command module at the National Air and Space Museum.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.
A Siberian Tiger at the National Zoo.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!
The Lincoln Memorial.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”
Until my next visit! #GoldfingerMovie #history #InternationalSpyMuseum #LibraryOfCongress #LincolnMemorial #Military #NationalAirAndSpaceMuseum #NationalArchives #NationalGalleryOfArt #NationalMall #NationalZoo #StarTrek #travel #UnitedStatesCapitol #usa #USSIowa #USSNewJersey #vacation #WashingtonDC #WashingtonMonument #WorldWarIIMemorial -
Library of Congress Blogs: 2026 Designing Storage Architectures for Digital Collections. “This year’s event attracted 172 of the world’s leading experts in data storage infrastructure, best practices, innovation, and future projections of the digital preservation ecosystem. The Library’s DSA organizers arranged a robust agenda to foster open discussion of current challenges in digital […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/06/10/library-of-congress-blogs-2026-designing-storage-architectures-for-digital-collections/ -
La Bibliothèque du Congrès des États-unis glisse ses archives dans une fiole d’ADN
https://actualitte.com/article/131740/insolite/une-bibliotheque-nationale-glisse-ses-archives-dans-une-fiole-d-adn
#LibraryOfCongress #USA #archives #adn #bibliotheques #bibliotheque -
Library of Congress Blog: New Online at the Library of Congress: May 2026. “Interested in learning more about what’s new in the Library of Congress’s digital collections? The Signal shares regular updates and we love showing off our colleagues’ hard work from across the Library. Read on for a sample of recent additions and a few favorite highlights.” To me the highlight of the new […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/05/27/new-online-at-the-library-of-congress-may-2026-library-of-congress/ -
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 […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/05/20/by-the-people-webinar-volunteer-to-transcribe-the-american-revolution-in-context-library-of-congress/ -
What To Watch On YouTube Right Now – Part 138
Welcome back my readers, YouTube viewers and all others who followed this series of articles focused on YouTube videos worth watching.
Have you been searching for something fun or interesting to watch on YouTube? Do you feel bored right now and you crave for something to see on the world’s most popular online video destination?
I recommend you check out the following videos I found.
#1 How To Get The Strongest And Most Optimized Spaceship Crew In Starfield – This year, Bethesda launched several important updates to make their 2023 science fiction role-playing game Starfield better and they also offered new DLC for those who crave for new content. One of the more defining aspects of the game is space travel and this includes setting up your own crew for your spaceship and there is impact on its functions and capabilities. If you want to learn how to get the stronger and most optimized crew for your ship, I encourage you watch the video below.
https://youtu.be/vy8iOx7eqVU?si=gn7W1mZxTOQ4SSrd
#2 Mari Iijima And The Defining Song of Macross: Do You Remember Love? – I really love watching the 1984 anime feature film Macross: Do You Remember Love? Apart from the great animation, the spectacle, the memorable characters and the solid storytelling, the movie also has a great soundtrack made to delight the long-time Macross fans. Still, the movie has its very own song performed by none other than Mari Iijima (Minmay) and it is a classic among Macross fans. In the videos below, you will see Mari Iijima perform the song live in a 1980s TV broadcast and the song playing with selected footage of Macross: Do You Remember Love? Enjoy these!
https://youtu.be/OfuW_Wbt73c?si=Q1DE8eJxo4Zk90pc
https://youtu.be/uJBMYV9e1Nc?si=veDGYU4r7s0flQ_H
#3 The Tuna City In Japan Is Changing With Tourism In Mind – If you plan to visit Japan at all, you might want to discover Miura City located in Kanagawa Prefecture. Miura City is famous for its fresh tuna and in recent times there has been a series of changes as several room-only hotels and new trends have sprouted as the locality is finding new ways to turn visitors into overnight guests. This is a place I would like to visit someday if ever I get the opportunity to return to Japan. Watch and learn from the Nippon TV video below.
https://youtu.be/fUPP30fYH78?si=MrC6Dml3IRVe7fcV
#4 Women’s Rights Activist Marries Islamist And Things Went Wrong – Did you notice that there is a gradual rising number of feminists and women’s rights activists who not embrace Islam (wicked and ugly) but also marry Islamists believing that things will be alright and they can just continue their activism. Of course, many of them activists and feminists do not fully understand Islam nor the full content of the Quran. As such, when things go very wrong, they are get into deep trouble. Watch and learn from the video below.
https://youtu.be/bx3YvoyP6cw?si=omxqhyR8CQfpfhYK
#5 Islamists Violate Hindu Women In India And Get Arrested – Let’s be very clear here. Islamists are oriented to conquer others even though they may not be numerous within a locality. Believe it or not, a group of such people who wielded power inside a business violated the Hindu women (plus at least one male employee) with regards to cultural norms and doing things that go against their faith. Even forced religious conversion happened. Watch and learn from the video below.
https://youtu.be/9xjFS-3Vuws?si=xuDIivIonrp9tQux
#6 Meatballs Reaction And Retrospective – When it comes to cinematic comedy, Bill Murray is iconic and his early work in 1979’s Meatballs already involved the late Harold Ramis and the late director Ivan Reitman. That said, there is something about Meatballs – produced for less than $2 million – that helped it achieve tremendous commercial success with ticket sales of $70 million. Remember, three of the creative minds behind the classic Ghostbusters are involved in this old movie and you will see how You, Me and The Movies react to it in the video below. Be aware that as of this writing, there are not too many movie reaction videos about Meatballs on YouTube. Also posted below is an in-depth retrospective about Meatballs by GoodBadFlicks.
https://youtu.be/nhR9xUCvpAI?si=Zh6gjAX0SdIrtSfT
https://youtu.be/D0BS-K3K_vE?si=HtyR_VThLUKv0Wj6
#7 Ashleigh Burton Reacts To The Thin Man – Have you ever heard of The Thin Man? It’s not a UFO reference. It’s the 1934 American pre-Code comedy-mystery movie that was eventually named to the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress having been deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” in 1997. Apart from its reputation in American film history, The Thin Man also resulted in five sequels. If you want to discover the 1934 movie but you don’t have the time nor resources to watch the movie, watch Ashleigh Burton’s reaction video and see how it impacts her.
https://youtu.be/IJRQXuw–20?si=mSYY7_Eb4EK6reBY
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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
#1930s #1970s #1980s #1990s #amusement #animation #anime #AshleighBurton #Asia #Bethesda #BethesdaSoftworks #BillMurray #CarloCarrasco #CBR #CBRCom #ChatGPT #cinema #classics #ComicBookResourcesCBR #Communist #crime #entertainment #entertainmentBlog #Facebook #feminism #feminist #film #fish #food #forcedConversion #fun #geek #GoodBadFlicks #Google #GoogleSearch #Hindu #holiday #immigration #Inclusion #India #Indians #Instagram #IslamicTerrorists #Islamist #IslamoLeft #IvanReitman #Japan #KanagawaPrefecture #KhanNida #liberal #LibraryOfCongress #LynnMinmay #Macross #MacrossDoYouRememberLove #MariIijima #Marxist #meatballs #Minmay #MiuraCity #movies #music #Muslim #MuslimWomen #Muslims #mustSee #mustWatch #NationalFilmRegistry #Nippon #NipponTV #nostalgia #onlineVideos #religion #Reviews #rolePlayingGameRPG #SaharTV #sciFi #scienceFiction #sex #sexualAssault #sexualHarassment #ShariaLaw #ShariahLawIsWicked #SJW #SJWs #socialJustice #socialJusticeWarriorSJW #SocialJusticeWarriorsSJWs #socialMedia #socialist #spaceTravel #spaceship #Starfield #SuperDimensionFortressMacross #Tata #TataConsultancyServicesTCS #terrorism #terrorists #The1930s #The1970s #The1980s #The1990s #TheThinMan #tourism #tourismBlog #tourists #travel #travelBlog #Tumblr #tuna #Twitter #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmericaUSA #USA #vacation #video #videoBlog #videos #WhatToWatchOnYouTube #women #womenSInterest #womenSRights #WordPress #WordPressCom #Xbox #YouMeAndTheMovies #YouTube #YouTuber #YouTubers -
Library of Congress Adds 'Doom' Soundtrack to National Recording Registry
📰 Original title: America's Library of Congress Officially Inducts... the Soundtrack for the Videogame 'Doom'
🤖 IA: It's clickbait ⚠️
👥 Users: It's clickbait ⚠️View full AI summary: https://en.killbait.com/library-of-congress-adds-doom-soundtrack-to-national-recording-registry.html?utm_source=mastodon_world&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=killbait.mastodon_world
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The U.S. Library of Congress has added the original DOOM soundtrack to the National Recording Registry https://www.engadget.com/2173357/the-original-doom-soundtrack-is-officially-in-the-library-of-congress
#DOOM #fps #90s #1990s #90sGames #PCGames #MIDI #LibraryOfCongress #NationalRecordingRegistry
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Associated Press: Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Chaka Khan and Vince Gill enter National Recording Registry. “The new inductees into the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress include Swift’s blockbuster 2014 pop album ‘1989,’ Beyoncé’s era-defining 2008 anthem ‘Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),’ Khan’s genre-blending hit ‘I Feel for You,’ Vince Gill’s emotional ballad ‘Go […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/05/15/associated-press-beyonce-taylor-swift-chaka-khan-and-vince-gill-enter-national-recording-registry/ -
Taylor Swift’s ‘1989,’ Beyoncé’s ‘Single Ladies’ and Records From Ray Charles, the Go-Go’s, Byrds, Weezer and Reba Inducted Into National Recording Registry
#Variety #News #Beyonce #LibraryOfCongress #Nationalrecordingregistry #TaylorSwift -
Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Go-Go’s & More Are 2026 National Recording Registry Inductees: Full List
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RE: https://social.yeschenko.com/@fsa_archive/116555558882821382
I made a bot posting images from the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information archive every 3 hours. Follow and promote ;)
#bot #history #libraryofcongress -
Photographer Who Visited All 50 States Get Interactive Map of Her Images https://petapixel.com/2026/05/09/photographer-who-visited-all-50-states-get-interactive-map-of-her-images/ #libraryofcongress #carolhighsmith #photoarchive #publicdomain #america #Travel #News
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In an intellectual twist so shocking it'll make your socks fall off, 🤯 the Library of Congress has finally declared #SQLite a "recommended storage format," right alongside that cutting-edge, never-to-become-obsolete duo: #XML and #CSV. Because nothing screams "future-proof" quite like a format that feels like it was created when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. 🦕📜
https://sqlite.org/locrsf.html #LibraryOfCongress #FutureProof #HackerNews #ngated -
Historic Photos Show the Once Ubiquitous American Diner https://petapixel.com/2026/05/01/historic-photos-show-the-once-ubiquitous-american-diner/ #libraryofcongress #historicalfriday #Editorial #americana #Features #diner #food
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Trump can be bad all on his own – The New York Time
Credit: Ben WisemanIf you missed the previous newsletter, you can read it here.
The president’s advisers stink. That’s not the problem.
By Frank Bruni
Given President Trump’s habitual insistence that he’s a victim — of partisan prosecutors, incompetent pollsters, the Federal Reserve, Norway — it’s a tribute to him that Republicans are identifying yet another clique of malefactors doing him wrong: He’s being undermined by his own accomplices. They’re doling out “bad advice.”
That was the precise phrase — the exact verdict — rendered by Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma in an interview on CNN about the killing of Alex Pretti and the brutality of ICE agents in Minneapolis. Stitt acknowledged “deep concerns over federal tactics and accountability.” But he also insisted that the president’s priorities regarding immigration and border security were right. It’s just that Trump was “getting bad advice right now.”
Other Republicans delivered the same message by focusing intently on the sins of Kristi Noem, the nation’s homeland security secretary, and the callousness of Gregory Bovino, the senior Border Patrol official who egged on the government’s masked gunmen — until he was given a timeout last week. They botched the mission. Debased the president.
What a joke. You can’t dishonor someone who has no honor to begin with. You can’t humiliate someone who so consistently and thoroughly humiliates himself.
But that’s just the start of the “bad advice” bunk.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: Trump can be bad all on his own
Tags: Accomplices, Advisors, America, Bad Advice, Donald Trump, History, Libraries, Library, Library of Congress, Opinion, Resistance, Science, The New York Times, Trump, Trump Administration, Trump as Victim, Trump Bad On His Own, United States
#Accomplices #Advisors #America #BadAdvice #DonaldTrump #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Resistance #Science #TheNewYorkTimes #Trump #TrumpAdministration #TrumpAsVictim #TrumpBadOnHisOwn #UnitedStates -
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.
Compilation of four photographs of the Reading Room within the British Library, taken on August 3, 2025 (Photographs by me. Sorry for the blurriness in one of these photos)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.
My photograph on the left on August 3, 2024, of the Rosetta Stone replica in the Enlightenment Gallery, and image of the replica from K-On! the Movie on the right.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.
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- 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.
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- “Library & Collections,” Society of Antiquities of London, 2024.
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- 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.
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- Hermann, Burkely. “Remembering “Bibliophile Princess” and its significant fictional depiction of libraries,” Pop Culture Library Review, 14 May 2024.
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- 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.
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- “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
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Supreme Court has empowered Trump. How much further will it go? – The Washington Post
Supreme Court has expanded presidential powers under Trump. How far will it go?
The justices will hear arguments Wednesday on the legality of most of the president’s tariffs — the first in a series of tests of sweeping claims of authority.
November 2, 2025 at 8:36 a.m. EST, Today at 8:36 a.m. EST, 10 min
The Supreme Court is obscured by scaffolding on Oct. 6.
(Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post)For nine months, in a flood of emergency orders, the Supreme Court has allowed President Donald Trump to expand his power.
The justices have permitted Trump to slash the federal bureaucracy, fire the heads of nominally independent agencies and exercise powers traditionally ascribed to Congress.
How much further will the court go?
That will be the overriding question Wednesday when the court hears arguments on the legality of most of the president’s tariffs — the first case to reach the justices in a series of high-stakes tests of Trump’ssweeping claimsof authority.
His asserted tariff powers are uniquely dear to Trump, who has repeatedly warned of economic devastation if the court were to rule against one of his signature policies. But the other tests of presidential power could also have major impact.
In November, the court will considerwhether to strike down a 90-year-old precedent that insulates independent agencies from White House interference. In January, it will explore whether Trump can remake the Federal Reserve, with its vast powers over the economy.
Taken together, the cases will determine the extent to which the Supreme Court will embrace Trump’s view of a presidency constrained by few checks and wielding the type of authority typically only seen in times of war or national crisis. Decisions are expected in the cases by the summer.
“I think the court so far has been more deferential to President Trump than most Supreme Courts in modern times,” said Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University. “It’s very hard to point to a significant way in which the court has said ‘stop’ to the White House. It raises the pressure on the court, and it raises the stakes for the term ahead.”
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement the high court’s rulings have corrected erroneous decisions by “far-left liberal activist judges” and thatthe president is doing what he was elected to do.
“The President will continue implementing the policy agenda that the American people voted for in November and will continue to be vindicated by higher courts when liberal activist judges attempt to intervene,” Jackson said.
Trump’s claim that he can unilaterally impose massive tariffs, a cornerstone of his economic agenda, is among his most aggressive moves to date. His assertion rests on a 1977 law that grants the president emergency powers to regulate international commerce. Trump’s argument that the law can be used for tariffs is one no other president has made in the statute’s 50-year history.
The administration has asked the justices to overturn federal court rulings that found the law did not convey authority to impose tariffs. Trump said the levies, some of which he announced at an event he dubbed “Liberation Day,” will help stem the flow of fentanyl across the border and restore America’s manufacturing base.
Small businesses and states have sued to block the levies, arguing they will cause widespread economic harm.
Cargo ships in Hong Kong in October. (Tyrone Siu / Reuters)Arguably, no institution has set the stage for Trump’s efforts to expand his poweras much as the Supreme Court and in particular its chief justice. John G. Roberts Jr. has written decisions in recent years declaring the president a uniquely powerful figure.
In a 2020 ruling, Roberts wrote the “entire ‘executive Power’ belongs to the President alone.” He has also intimated the president should have a free hand to fire low-level government employees and made it easier for the president to remove the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: Supreme Court has empowered Trump. How much further will it go? – The Washington Post
#2025 #America #ChiefJustice #ConservativeMajority #DonaldTrump #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Roberts #SCOTUS #SupremeCourtOfTheUnitedStates #TheWashingtonPost #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UncheckedPower #UnitedStates
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Scenes From Saturday’s Nationwide ‘No Kings’ Protests – WIRED
By Brian Barrett Alyssa Walker
Politics, Oct 19, 2025 5:00 PM
Scenes From Saturday’s Nationwide ‘No Kings’ Protests
Organizers say the “No Kings” protests drew more than 7 million people across 2,700 cities. The crowds included high-profile politicians, A-list celebrities, and more than a few creative inflatables.
PHOTOGRAPH: Ethan Noah Roy
On Saturday, crowds gathered in cities across the United States to protest President Donald Trump and his administration. Organizers of the No Kings rallies claim that more than 7 million people attended in all, across 2,700 cities in the Unites States and beyond. The gatherings provided a clear picture not only of how widespread the resistance to the Trump administration has become, but also the diversity of the coalition driving it. Not to mention the signs.
“Today, millions of Americans stood together to reject authoritarianism and remind the world that our democracy belongs to the people, not to one man’s ambition,” said Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg, cofounders of the nonprofit Indivisible—which took the lead on organizing the rallies—in a statement.
Ahead of Saturday, House speaker Mike Johnson described the planned gatherings as the “hate America rally” and warned that the crowds would be filled with “antifa types.” In reality, the protests were uniformly peaceful, with inflatable costumes appearing to outnumber conservative bogeymen by a wide margin. And Trump’s response to No Kings? An AI-generated video of himself, wearing a crown, piloting a fighter jet and dropping massive amounts of excrement on protesting US citizens below.
In the real world, the crowds walked their routes without issue. Below are snapshots of No Kings from cities across the US, a look at a protest movement that is increasingly motivated and able to mobilize.
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Brian Barrett is the executive editor of WIRED. Previously he was the editor in chief of the tech and culture site Gizmodo and was a business reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest daily newspaper. … Read More
Alyssa Walker is WIRED’s Creative Director, overseeing design, photography and all things visual. Prior to working at WIRED she was the Creative Director at Willamette Week in Portland, Oregon. Her work has been recognized by the Society of Publication Designers, American Illustration Awards, Association of Alternative Media and the Society … Read More
Topics Donald Trump politics protests
WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. It is the essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation. The WIRED conversation illuminates how technology is changing every aspect of our lives—from culture to business, science to design. The breakthroughs and innovations that we uncover lead to new ways of thinking, new connections, and new industries.
Continue/Read Original Article: https://www.wired.com/story/no-kings-protests-photos/
#2025 #America #DonaldTrump #Education #History #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #NationalPhotos #NoDictators #NoKings #NoKingsDay #NoNazis #October19 #Opinion #PeacefulProtests #Politics #Resistance #Science #Technology #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates #Wired
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Concerns mount over increased violence among federal immigration agents – NPR
Tackles, projectiles and gunfire: Many fear ICE tactics are growing more violent
October 13, 202512:57 PM ET
By Meg Anderson
Federal officers detain a person while members of the community and activists protest near the 3900 block of South Kedzie Avenue, Oct. 4, in Chicago. Armando L. Sanchez / Tribune News ServiceThere 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
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‘The Secret of Secrets’ by Dan Brown – The Washington Post
(Illustration by Natalie Vineberg / The Washington Post; iStock)Books Book Reviews Fiction Nonfiction Summer reading
Dan Brown clearly had fun writing his new book. It’s contagious.
Robert Langdon is back in “The Secret of Secrets.” Prepare for 600 hilariously hectic pages of murder, mayhem and New Age murmuring.
September 9, 2025, 6 min, Review by Ron Charles
In 2003, if you made the mistake of confessing — say, at a barbecue — that you reviewed books for a living, the other men on the patio would look at you piteously until one of them thought to ask, “What did you think of ‘The Da Vinci Code’?”
More than two decades on, the magnitude of Dan Brown’s success is still hard to quantify without using exponential math or to justify without succumbing to despair. He has enough copies in print for every adult in the United States to own one, which you can confirm by checking the coffee table in any Airbnb.
Like so many things that are insanely popular — Crocs, Nutella, MrBeast — Brown’s thrillers look easy to imitate but aren’t. He shatters dramatic moments into shiny, irresistible shards.He lures us in with a layer of intellectuality as deep as the honey glaze on an Easter ham. And in book after book, we’re rushed through perilous crises involving esoteric knowledge that somehow threatens the entire world. With Brown, everything everywhere all at once is at stake — the church, social order, Western civilization — which makes your clogged gutters feel momentarily less urgent.
The last time we saw Brown’s fit, nerdy hero — Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon — was eight years ago in a mind-bogglingly silly book called “Origin.” In that story, Langdon dashes around Spain trying to track down a dead billionaire’s PowerPoint presentation that “boldly contradicted almost every established religious doctrine.”
Brown’s latest thriller, “The Secret of Secrets,” tweaks that reliable formula only slightly, but through some occult alchemy, his New Coke is better than the old brew.
Image source: DoubledayReader, I drank it.
📚
Following Books
This time around, we’re in Prague. Brown surveys its Gothic beauty, medieval history and Kafkaesque mystique like Rick Steves on a 24-hour layover. Langdon has come to the City of a Hundred Spires to cheer on his older but stunningly beautiful new girlfriend, Dr. Katherine Solomon, last seen in “The Lost Symbol” (2009).The night before the novel opens, Katherine delivered a mesmerizing lecture about her work in noetics, the science of human consciousness.
Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: ‘The Secret of Secrets’ by Dan Brown – The Washington Post
#2025 #America #Books #DanBrown #Fiction #Film #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Novel #Opinion #Reading #Television #TheSecretOfSecrets #TheWashingtonPost #UnitedStates #Writing
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Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.: The Architect of Conservative Jurisprudence – A Special SCOTUS Series
Source: Wikipedia. By Steve Petteway – http://www.supremecourthistory.org/history-of-the-court/the-current-court/chief-justice-john-roberts-jr/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=596761Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.: The Architect of Conservative Jurisprudence – Here’s a look at our Chief Justice, his life, background, and how he influences our legal challenges, legal issues, from his conservative views. This report was prepared by Perplexity Pro, and edited by DrWeb.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.: The Architect of Conservative Jurisprudence
John Glover Roberts Jr. has served as the 17th Chief Justice of the United States since September 29, 2005, presiding over one of the most transformative periods in Supreme Court history. As the youngest chief justice in over a century at age 50, Roberts has authored landmark conservative decisions while attempting to balance institutional preservation with ideological advancement over his two decades of leadership.
Early Life and Formation
Born on January 27, 1955, in Buffalo, New York, Roberts was the second of four children to John (Jack) G. Roberts Sr., a Bethlehem Steel Corporation executive, and Rosemary Roberts (née Podrasky). The family’s Catholic faith would prove formative, as would their move to Long Beach, Indiana, in the early 1960s when Roberts Sr. received a promotion to work at a new steel plant.
Roberts excelled academically from an early age, graduating first in his class from La Lumiere School, a Catholic boarding school in Indiana, where he also captained the football team. To help pay for college, he worked summers in a steel mill, an experience that grounded him in working-class values despite his later elite academic trajectory. His early ambition was to become a historian, reflecting an intellectual curiosity that would later influence his judicial approach to constitutional interpretation.
Academic Excellence and Early Career
Roberts completed his undergraduate degree at Harvard University in just three years, graduating summa cum laude in 1976 with a major in history. He remained at Harvard for law school, where he served as managing editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude in 1979. These academic achievements established him as one of the brightest legal minds of his generation.
Following law school, Roberts secured two prestigious federal clerkships that would shape his career trajectory. From 1979-1980, he clerked for Judge Henry J. Friendly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, one of the most respected federal judges of his era. He then clerked for Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist during the 1980 term, establishing a mentorship that would profoundly influence his judicial philosophy.
Government Service and Private Practice
Roberts’s early career alternated between high-level government service and elite private practice. From 1981-1982, he served as Special Assistant to Attorney General William French Smith, then moved to the White House as Associate Counsel to President Ronald Reagan from 1982-1986. During this period, he helped craft conservative legal positions that would later inform his judicial decisions, including memoranda expressing skepticism about discrimination remedies and civil rights enforcement.
In 1986, Roberts joined the prestigious law firm Hogan & Hartson as an associate, becoming a partner within a year. His appellate practice was extraordinarily successful, focusing on Supreme Court litigation and complex constitutional issues. From 1989-1993, he returned to government as Principal Deputy Solicitor General, the second-in-command in the Office of the Solicitor General, where he argued numerous cases before the Supreme Court.
Marriage and Family Life
Roberts married Jane Marie Sullivan in 1996, a fellow attorney and Harvard Law School graduate whom he met during his government service. The couple has two adopted children, Josephine and John, and their family life reflects Roberts’s commitment to balancing professional demands with personal relationships. Jane Roberts has maintained her own successful legal career, though she has faced scrutiny for potential conflicts of interest related to her legal recruiting work while her husband serves on the Court.
Path to the Supreme Court
By WHITE HOUSE PHOTO BY BRIAN LEHNHARDT – Federal judicial nominees listen to President George W. Bush as he announces their nominations. WHITE HOUSE PHOTO BY BRIAN LEHNHARDT – https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/05/images/20010509-3.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76274597President George H.W. Bush first nominated Roberts to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1992 when he was just 37, but the Democratic-controlled Senate never held a confirmation vote. Roberts returned to private practice during the Clinton years, also teaching at Georgetown University Law Center.
In 2001, President George W. Bush renominated Roberts to the D.C. Circuit, and he was finally confirmed in May 2003. During his brief two-year tenure on the appeals court, Roberts wrote approximately 50 opinions that demonstrated his conservative judicial philosophy and exceptional legal craftsmanship.
Bush initially nominated Roberts in July 2005 to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, but when Chief Justice Rehnquist died in September, Bush elevated the nomination to Chief Justice. Roberts’s confirmation hearings featured his famous “umpire” analogy: “Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules, they apply them… I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.” The Senate confirmed him by a vote of 78-22 on September 29, 2005.
Judicial Philosophy and Constitutional Interpretation
Roberts advocates for judicial restraint, originalism, and textualism in constitutional interpretation. He believes judges should apply law neutrally rather than engage in creative lawmaking, though critics argue his major decisions have often advanced conservative policy goals. His approach combines respect for precedent with willingness to overturn liberal rulings he views as constitutionally flawed.
As Chief Justice, Roberts has consistently emphasized institutional integrity and incremental change over revolutionary jurisprudence. However, his leadership has coincided with the most conservative Supreme Court in nearly a century, creating tension between his institutionalist instincts and ideological objectives.
Major Opinions and Legal Impact
Healthcare and Federal Power
Roberts authored the pivotal decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (2012), upholding the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate as a constitutional tax. This decision surprised conservatives but demonstrated Roberts’s complex approach to federal power and his occasional willingness to break with conservative orthodoxy to preserve institutional legitimacy.
Civil Rights and Voting
In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), Roberts authored the majority opinion striking down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, arguing that federal oversight of state voting laws was no longer necessary. This decision enabled numerous states to implement voting restrictions, fundamentally altering American voting rights protections.
Presidential Power
Roberts has authored several opinions expanding executive authority, including Trump v. Hawaii (2018) upholding the Muslim travel ban and Trump v. United States (2024) establishing broad presidential immunity from criminal prosecution. These decisions reflect his deference to executive power in areas of national security and foreign policy.
Race and Education
Roberts authored Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), ending race-based college admissions programs nationwide. This decision fulfilled a long-standing conservative goal and demonstrated Roberts’s willingness to overturn decades of precedent when advancing originalist constitutional interpretation.
Leadership Style and Court Dynamics
As Chief Justice, Roberts assigns majority opinions when he votes with the majority, a power he has used strategically to shape legal doctrine and maintain control over controversial decisions. His leadership style emphasizes consensus-building and narrow rulings, though the Court’s 6-3 conservative majority has enabled broader conservative decisions than Roberts might prefer.
Roberts has presided over significant constitutional developments including marriage equality, religious liberty expansions, Second Amendment jurisprudence, and abortion rights. He also presided over President Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2020, maintaining judicial decorum during highly partisan proceedings.
The Roberts-Barrett Partnership: Mentorship and Judicial Alliance
A defining aspect of Roberts’s tenure has been his evolving relationship with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whom he has cultivated as a key ally in advancing conservative jurisprudence while maintaining institutional credibility. Since Barrett joined the Court in 2020, Roberts has strategically assigned her significant majority opinions, including the landmark Trump v. CASA decision that expanded executive power while limiting federal court authority to issue nationwide injunctions.
Roberts’s mentorship of Barrett reflects both personal and strategic considerations. Early in her tenure, he assigned her a complex property rights case where she initially drafted a majority opinion but later changed positions—a bold move that could have antagonized the Chief Justice but instead demonstrated her independent judicial thinking. Rather than penalizing this judicial evolution, Roberts has continued to entrust Barrett with increasingly important assignments, including cases involving Native American rights and religious liberty.
Barrett’s judicial philosophy closely mirrors Roberts’s own approach to constitutional interpretation. Both justices embrace originalism and textualism, seeking to interpret constitutional and statutory language according to its original public meaning rather than evolving contemporary understanding. Like Roberts, Barrett demonstrates judicial restraint and institutionalist concerns, often preferring narrow rulings over sweeping constitutional pronouncements. Their shared commitment to incremental conservative change has made them frequent collaborators in cases where Roberts needs a reliable fifth or sixth vote for majority coalitions.
The Chief Justice appears particularly attentive to Barrett’s contributions during oral arguments and conference discussions, recognizing her potential as a swing vote who can attract liberal justices to conservative positions. In several high-profile cases, Roberts and Barrett have joined with liberal justices to constrain Trump administration overreach, demonstrating their shared concern for judicial independence and separation of powers. This partnership has frustrated some conservatives who expected Barrett to be more ideologically rigid, but it has enhanced Roberts’s ability to control controversial decisions and maintain Court legitimacy while still advancing conservative legal principles.
Legacy and Long-Term Impact
After twenty years as Chief Justice, Roberts has fundamentally transformed American constitutional law through conservative jurisprudence while maintaining the Court’s basic institutional framework. His tenure has seen the steady advancement of originalist constitutional interpretation, limited federal regulatory power, expanded religious liberty protections, and strengthened executive authority.
Critics argue that Roberts has enabled a “constitutional revolution” that contradicts his stated commitment to incremental change and judicial restraint. Supporters contend he has restored constitutional text and original meaning to Supreme Court jurisprudence while preserving essential democratic institutions.
Roberts continues to navigate the tension between conservative legal advancement and institutional preservation as he enters his third decade of service. His ultimate legacy will depend on whether his leadership produces lasting constitutional change or triggers backlash that undermines judicial authority. As both the youngest Chief Justice in over a century and one of the longest-serving, Roberts’s influence on American law will extend far beyond his eventual retirement.
Bibliography and Sources
Primary Sources:
- Current Members. Supreme Court of the United States. July 12, 2017.
- 2024 Year End Report on the Federal Judiciary. Supreme Court of the United States. 2024.
Government and Institutional Sources:
- Judicial Nominations – Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. George W. Bush White House Archives. August 7, 2008.
- Roberts, John Glover, Jr. Federal Judicial Center. June 29, 2022.
- John G. Roberts, Jr. Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law.
- Chief Justice John Roberts. Justia Supreme Court Center. September 28, 2005.
Academic and Scholarly Sources:
- Biography and Judicial Philosophy of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Seton Hall University Scholarship.
- Chief Justice John Roberts and the Combination of Conservatism and Institutionalism. Illinois Law Review. August 30, 2023.
- The Philosophy and Jurisprudence of Chief Justice Roberts. University of Utah College of Law.
- The Judicial Philosophy of Chief Justice John Roberts. Emory International Law Review. February 3, 2021.
- In the Balance: Law and Politics on the Roberts Court. William & Mary Law School.
- “In Search of Justice: An Examination of the Appointments of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito”. William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal. April 22, 2014.
- Federalism Rebalancing and the Roberts Court. Harvard Law Review. May 1, 2025.
News and Analysis Sources:
- John G. Roberts, Jr. | Biography, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Britannica. August 14, 2025.
- The Current Court: Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. Supreme Court Historical Society. March 27, 2022.
- In 20 years under John Roberts, a dramatic rightward turn for the US Supreme Court. Reuters. September 8, 2025.
- This Is the Presidency John Roberts Has Built. The Atlantic. July 21, 2025.
- The Life and Turbulent Times of Chief Justice John Roberts. Aspen Ideas Festival. August 19, 2025.
- Understanding John Roberts: A Conservative Institutionalist. JURIST. July 30, 2020.
Roberts-Barrett Relationship Sources:
- Initially wary of Trump, Roberts and Barrett offer the former president a victory. CNN. June 28, 2025.
- The behind-the-scenes power John Roberts wields to shape Supreme Court decisions. CNN. July 2, 2025.
- Amy Coney Barrett Is The Most Interesting Justice On The Court. Original Jurisdiction (Substack). July 2, 2025.
- Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts Become a Thorn in Trump’s Side. Newsweek. March 6, 2025.
- Amy Coney Barrett’s Biggest Supreme Court Allies Revealed. Newsweek. July 15, 2025.
- Supreme Court’s Roberts turns court to the right as Barrett becomes influential. NPR. July 1, 2024.
- How Amy Coney Barrett Is Confounding the Right and the Left. The New York Times. June 15, 2025.
- Opinion | Trump resistance needs Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts. The Washington Post. March 27, 2025.
- Closing the book on the term. SCOTUSblog. June 30, 2025.
- Amy Coney Barrett. Wikipedia. May 7, 2017.
#2025 #America #AmyConeyBarrett #ChiefJustice #Conservative #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #JohnRoberts #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #RightWingConservative #Science #SupremeCourt #Trump #TrumpAdministration #USSupremeCourt #UnitedStates
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In his new book, author Dan Brown tackles the ultimate mystery : NPR
In his new book, author Dan Brown tackles the ultimate mystery
September 9, 2025, 4:27 PM ET, Heard on All Things Considered
By Scott Detrow, Tyler Bartlam, and Jeanette Woods
5-Minute Listen TranscriptAuthor Dan Brown is known for storylines that delve into myth and conspiracy theories. His new book — The Secret of Secrets — tackles the ultimate mystery: human consciousness.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Robert Langdon is back in action, the dashing and brilliant Harvard professor who has a knack for wandering into situations where he unearths big philosophical questions and at the same time gets chased around by bad guys who do not want those questions answered. Langdon is, of course, the recurring main character in author Dan Brown’s thrillers “The Da Vinci Code,” “Angels & Demons” and many others. In Brown’s latest novel, “The Secret Of Secrets,” Langdon has traded the mysteries of Christianity and the mysteries of Freemasonry for the even bigger mystery of the nature of human consciousness. Dan Brown, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
DAN BROWN: Thanks for having me.
DETROW: So this is by my count your sixth book starring Robert Langdon. How has he changed over the years?
BROWN: (Laughter) Well, he’s aging much more slowly than I am, I’ve sensed.
DETROW: (Laughter).
BROWN: You know, this book took eight years to write. And Langdon, who is always – he’s always skeptical about all things conspiratorial and paranormal and all that sort of stuff. And in this book, he is sort of dragged out of his comfort box by a noetic scientist named Katherine Solomon. And he becomes a believer in aspects of consciousness that to most of us, myself included, seem quite out of this world.
DETROW: I want to ask about the topic of the book. How much were you personally thinking about these big questions of consciousness? Was that how the book started out? Is that something you were wrestling with or wondering about and wanting to learn more about?
BROWN: Absolutely. I mean, it’s no secret I like to write about big, sweeping, important topics, you know?
DETROW: Yeah.
BROWN: There really is no topic bigger, that I can imagine, than consciousness. It’s the lens through which we see reality, see ourselves, see our interactions with other people. And I wrote the character Katherine Solomon maybe 10 or 12 years ago as an ancillary character in another book, and she was a noetic scientist. And through the research for that book, I started to learn about noetic science. And some of these mind experiments who have results that are simply – you cannot believe them. You hear what the result is and you say, that’s impossible. And you read more, and you find out that reality is a much stranger thing than we ever imagined.
DETROW: For those of us who aren’t as familiar, can you briefly explain noetic science?
Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: In his new book, author Dan Brown tackles the ultimate mystery : NPR
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Appellate panel rejects Trump’s deportations under Alien Enemies Act – The Washington Post
Federal appellate panel rejects Trump’s deportations under wartime law
The 2-1 decision from the panel, made up of judges from one of the nation’s most conservative appellate courts, follows a string of similar rulings from lower courts across the country. Updated, September 3, 2025 at 10:42 a.m. EDT, today at 10:42 a.m. EDT, 6 min
Demonstrators cheer as a person exits U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, following their immigration check-in on Tuesday. (Jim Slosiarek / AP)A federal appellate court ruled Tuesday that President Donald Trump unlawfully invoked a centuries-old wartime law toswiftlydeport Venezuelan migrants, blocking one of his administration’s most contentious immigration initiatives and teeing up a legal battle sure to end up before the Supreme Court.
A divided three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit rejected Trump’s use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to remove alleged members of the Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua gang, concluding that their presence in the country did not amount to the type of invasion or “predatory incursion” lawmakers envisioned when they drafted the statute allowing fast-tracked deportations.
The 2-1 decision from the panel, made up of judges from one of the nation’s most conservative appellate courts, follows a string of similar rulings from lower courts across the country that have almost uniformly rejected Trump’s invocation of the law on similar grounds. However, the case the 5th Circuit decided on Tuesday is widely viewed as the one most likely to reach the Supreme Court first, and several other appellate courts had paused their consideration of similar cases while awaiting the circuit court’s ruling.
Writing for the majority, Judge Leslie H. Southwick said Trump’s assertions that the Venezuelan government had encouraged Tren de Aragua members to immigrate to the United States illegally to traffic drugs and commit acts of violence did not amount to the type of military conflict that Congress envisioned when it drafted the law. The Alien Enemies Act has only been invoked three times before — during the War of 1812 and both World Wars.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: Appellate panel rejects Trump’s deportations under Alien Enemies Act – The Washington Post
#2025 #AlienEnemiesAct #America #AppellateCourt #Deportations #DonaldTrump #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #Technology #TheWashingtonPost #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates
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Letters from an American – The Nineteenth Amendment – eather Cox Richardson
The Nineteenth Amendment
By Heather Cox Richardson, Aug 26, 2025 Yesterday, I intended to write about the Nineteenth Amendment prohibiting states from denying women the right to vote because today is the anniversary of the amendment’s certification in 1920. But I decided the political news yesterday couldn’t wait, so I dropped the plan and wrote about Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker’s stand against President Donald J. Trump.Still, as right-wing Christian nationalists supported by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth are calling for an end to women’s right to vote, it seems crucial to remember the history of the drive for women’s suffrage in the United States of America. While you won’t get the full letter about it I had intended, my team put together a 3-minute video about the history, linked here.
(This is not tonight’s letter, by the way. I just couldn’t bear to let the anniversary pass without noting it.)
!
Continue/Read Original Article Here: The Nineteenth Amendment – by Heather Cox Richardson
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Trump-Putin summit starts on red carpet, ends in confusion
Trump-Putin summit starts on red carpet, ends in confusion
By Dave Lawler
Caption: Trump and Putin kick off the summit. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty ImagesFriday’s summit in Alaska began as a superpower spectacle, then abruptly ended without any indication of what was achieved or where things go from here.
Why it matters: President Trump didn’t get the ceasefire he came for, or the public commitment he wanted from Vladimir Putin to meet next with Volodymyr Zelensky. The leaders scrapped a planned lunch and departed early — but not before both declared the meeting a success.
Between the lines: It’s not hard to see why Putin likely left Anchorage satisfied. Images of Trump applauding as he walked down the red carpet were beamed back to Russia, and around the world.
- “They spent three years telling everyone Russia was isolated, and today they saw the beautiful red carpet laid out for the Russian president in the U.S.,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova noted.
- For now at least, Putin seems to have reset a relationship with Trump that had been splintering. Their brief joint press conference was short on substance but long on mutual praise.
- And Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that new oil sanctions for Russia — which were imminent until Putin proposed the meeting — were now probably off the table for a few weeks.
The other side: Trump insisted that progress was made on a number of issues, though not on the “biggest” one, without offering any specifics.
- En route to Alaska, Trump told Fox “I won’t be happy” if Putin doesn’t agree to a ceasefire.
- But afterwards, Trump said he was happy. “I think the meeting was a ten,” he told Hannity.
- Still, Trump was somewhat downbeat during the joint appearance. While Putin claimed an unspecified “agreement” had been reached, Trump brushed that off and said “we didn’t get there.”
Friction point: The inconclusive outcome might be most vexing to the party that was not in the room.
- While Trump warned of “very severe consequences” for Putin ahead of the summit if clear progress was not made, he pivoted to pressuring Ukraine once it was over.
- Trump told Hannity it was now “up to President Zelensky to get it done,” and later said “Russia is a very big power, and they’re not.”
Continue/Read Original Article Here: Trump-Putin summit starts on red carpet, ends in confusion
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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.
At stake in Alaska: two egos, and a continent’s future
by Jess Bidgood and David E. SangerThere 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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Inside the Library of Congress’s Collection – Library of Congress
Photograph of digital display by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress.
Inside the Library of Congress’s Collection
The nation’s library is an ever-expanding temple of knowledge and creativity. Here are a few of its most incredible, unexpected, and otherwise historic jewels.
Written by Ron Cassie | Published on July 24, 2025
During the War of 1812, British troops famously torched the US Capitol, burning down the still-new home of the fledgling country’s legislative body. Also going up in flames? Roughly 3,000 books, largely about law, that made up the Library of Congress’s core collection.
Within a month, former President and noted bibliophile Thomas Jefferson offered his personal library as a replacement. His offer was warmly received by many in the House and Senate, but not by all. Massachusetts representative Cyrus King, an opposition Federalist, argued that Jefferson’s diverse holdings—which included works in Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, and Old English, as well as a translation of the Qur’an—would foster his “infidel philosophy” while being “in languages which many cannot read, and most ought not.”
The bill narrowly passed, along party lines, and Congress paid almost $24,000 for Jefferson’s 6,487 books. On May 8, 1815, as a final wagonload of books left Monticello, Jefferson wrote to Samuel Harrison Smith, who had helped facilitate the sale, that “an interesting treasure is added to . . . the depository of unquestionably the choicest collection of books in the U.S. and I hope it will not be without some general effect on the literature of our country.”
Jefferson eventually got his wish. Today, the Library of Congress is a national jewel. Its main building on Capitol Hill, opened in 1897 and later named for the Founding Father, is home to a domed Main Reading Room that endures as one of Washington’s most elegant spaces. Within the library’s collection of more than 178 million items, the world’s largest, are a number of incredible treasures—and across the following pages, we’ve highlighted some of our favorites.
More incredible still? Most of what the institution has to offer is accessible with a simple library card.
In many ways, the modern library is the brainchild of former Librarian of Congress Ainsworth Spofford, a visionary who lobbied Abraham Lincoln for the job and then stayed on through nine (!) Presidents. Spofford led construction of the Thomas Jefferson Building and a major expansion of the collection, working toward his broader goal of establishing a national library. He succeeded yet never lost sight of the institution’s original mission to serve legislators: For decades, the Jefferson Building and the Capitol were connected by an underground tunnel equipped with an electric book trolley and pneumatic message tubes. Lawmakers (or really, their staffers and pages) could send book requests to librarians via the tubes, and librarians could send books back via the trolley.
In the early 2000s, the book tunnel was demolished to make room for the underground Capitol Visitor Center. A separate, pedestrian-friendly tunnel now links the two buildings, where librarians can still be spotted wheeling book carts from time to time. That’s hardly the only way the library has evolved. Its physical collection is now housed in three Capitol Hill buildings and other facilities in Maryland and Virginia; its digital collection, begun in 1994, contains more than 900 million files; its collections of sounds, music, prints, moving images, and photographs date back more than 100 years and continue to grow alongside audiovisual media and communication.
Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: Inside the Library of Congress’s Collection
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New-to-me, from Library of Congress: Archiving an Island Nation: The Maldives Government Web Archive. “In this interview, Charlotte Giles discusses the Maldives Government Web Archive — how it was created, what it preserves, and why it is an important addition to the Library’s Asian Division. She shares examples of how the archive captures the unique perspective of an island nation and […]
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