#libraryofcongress — Public Fediverse posts

Library News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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”

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

Library of Congress: Library of Congress Celebrates America’s 250 Years. “The 225-year-old Library of Congress serves Congress and the American people with more than 181 million physical items and an expansive digital archive. In 2026, the Library will be opening several new exhibitions to connect the public with the Library’s collections, including…”

America’s deepening affordability crisis summed up in 5 charts – CBS News

• MoneyWatch
• Managing Your Money
• CBS News Price Tracker

MoneyWatch

America’s deepening affordability crisis summed up in 5 charts

By Aimee Picchi, Mary Cunningham

Updated on: November 19, 2025 / 5:27 PM EST / CBS News

Although inflation across the U.S. is far cooler than in the post-pandemic years, millions of Americans say they still feel the pinch of rising prices, struggle to pay the bills and express concern about their financial prospects. 

Price increases are nowhere near the level reached in June of 2022, when the Consumer Price Index hit a 40-year high of 9.1%. Yet many people feel squeezed by the cost of simple daily necessities, including the ability to afford healthy food, and by long-term increases in the cost of essentials such as housing and health care.

This affordability crisis is rooted in a combination of both longstanding economic issues dating back decades and more recent developments. For instance, housing costs have surged partly due to a lack of available homes, a result of cutbacks in construction following the Great Recession, while more recently steep new U.S. tariffs have fueled inflation.  

Inflation and the economy now rank as Americans’ top national concerns, according to an October CBS News poll. 

“Everything is going up in price very quickly,” said Jeremy Tolbert, a 47-year-old web developer in Lawrence, Kansas.

With his family’s monthly health care premiums set to rise 18% to $2,600 next year, he’s planning to cut back in other areas. “Our food budget is going to go down — we’re not talking about eating beans and rice, but going from a comfortable middle-class lifestyle to eating how we did when we first got out of college,” Tolbert said.

Here are five key categories of spending that many Americans are struggling to afford.

Food

Almost half of Americans say it’s harder to afford groceries today than it was a year ago, according to a September survey by Axios and the Harris Poll. Only 19% said food prices are cheaper than a year earlier, with roughly a third seeing no change. 

Editor’s Note: See the PRICE CHECKER in the online version only. Cannot add here.. –DrWeb

Growth in food prices has eased considerably, although it is still rising, with the latest CPI report showing grocery prices rose 2.7% in September on an annual basis, a sharp contrast to the 11.4% increase in 2022. Overall, however, food prices as of September were more than 18% higher than in January of 2022, according to the CBS News price tracker. 

Shoppers don’t assess food costs the same way economists do. They focus on their day-to-day spending — which keeps climbing — and compare their out-of-pocket spending today with what they paid several years ago, according to research from the University of Florida. 

In other words, people’s experience of inflation and how they measure it in their daily lives may not mesh with official economic measures that paint a more optimistic picture. 

Meanwhile, other recent signals underscore the difficulty many Americans have simply putting food on the table. Roughly 14% of U.S. households reported food insecurity on average between January and October, up from 12.5% in 2024, according to data from Purdue University’s Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability.

In New York City, for example, 40% of local families can’t afford their weekly food costs, according to new data from charitable organization Robin Hood and Columbia University.

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

Continue/Read Original Article Here: America’s deepening affordability crisis summed up in 5 charts – CBS News

#2025 #affordability #affordabilityCrisis #america #annualChildCareCosts #cbs #cbsNews #donaldTrump #economy #education #electricityAndUtilityCosts #fiveCharts #food #healthCare #history #housing #inflation #libraryOfCongress #moneywatch #onlineVersionHasCharts #opinion #politics #resistance #trump #trumpAdministration #unitedStates

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

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

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

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

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

By Justin Jouvenal

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

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

How much further will the court go?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The White House movie theater demolition ends a storied era in presidential history – Virginia Public Media (VPM)

NPR News

The White House movie theater demolition ends a storied era in presidential history

NPR | By Chloe Veltman, Published October 25, 2025 at 6:23 PM EDT

It was, on occasion, used by presidents to rehearse important speeches such as the State of the Union address; and at other times, as a spot for visitors to dump their hats, bags and coats. But for more than 80 years, the White House movie theater was mostly a place where the first family and their guests went for entertainment.

Demolition began this week of the White House Family Theater — along with the rest of the White House’s East Wing where the snug, shoe-box-shaped auditorium was located — to make way for a new $300 million ballroom. It marks the end of an era in American movie theater history.

Since its conversion from a cloakroom by Franklin Roosevelt in 1942, the private, 40-ish-seat theater has screened everything from newsreels and documentaries to westerns and musicals. It has been through several facelifts, most recently ditching cream and red floral curtains, and beige walls and seating for all-round “movie-palace red” ornamented with gold molding and dark wood trim following a renovation overseen by first lady Laura Bush in 2004.

“The best perk of the White House is not Air Force One or Camp David or anything else, it’s the wonderful movie theater I get here,” then-President Bill Clinton told film critic Roger Ebert in a 1999 interview.

Jimmy Carter was also a big fan. In a single term, the 39th president screened at least 400 films between this venue and Camp David, starting with All the President’s Men — a movie about the Watergate scandal — soon after he was sworn in. Richard Nixon saw Patton, about the controversial World War II Gen. George S. Patton, multiple times during the Vietnam War. Barack Obama’s many screenings at the theater ranged from Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom and Selma to Julie & Julia and Star Wars Rogue One. President Trump’s picks have included Finding Dory and Sunset Boulevard. John F. Kennedy, who loved James Bond movies, saw From Russia With Love the day before he was assassinated in 1963.

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

Continue/Read Original Article Here: The White House movie theater demolition ends a storied era in presidential history

#2025 #America #Audio #DonaldTrump #Education #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #NPR #October26 #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #Sunday #Transcript #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates #VirginiaPublicMedia #VPM

One of music’s best kept secrets celebrates 100 years, quietly – NPR

Music

One of music’s best kept secrets celebrates 100 years, quietly

The story of Coolidge Auditorium, at the Library of Congress, is one of American ingenuity, cultural integrity and a century of free concerts.

October 25, 20258:18 AM ET, Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday

Tom Huizenga 6-Minute Listen Transcript

The year is 1925. The Great Gatsby is published, the jazz age is swinging, and on October 28th, a new concert hall opens at an unlikely spot — the Library of Congress, in Washington D.C. If only its cream-colored walls could talk. For 100 years, performers of all stripes have graced the Library stage, from classical music luminaries like Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky to Stevie Wonder, Audra McDonald and Max Roach. Today, it remains one of the capitol city’s most beautiful, best sounding and perhaps best kept secrets.

The idea for a concert hall at the Library of Congress did not stem from congress. It came from philanthropist Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge — and one bespoke piece of bipartisan legislation. “She was indefatigable and intrepid,” says Anne McLean, senior producer for concerts at the Library, “a remarkable woman, six feet tall, a brilliant pianist.” McLean is sitting with me on the stage, overlooking the empty auditorium. To mark the centennial, celebratory concerts and commissions have been heard in the hall all year. But not now. The government shutdown has forced the hall to close its doors, and unless a deal is reached before Tuesday, it’ll be closed on the anniversary itself.

Coolidge was born into a wealthy Chicago family in 1864. She studied music, traveled abroad, married a Harvard-trained orthopedic surgeon and, in 1924, came to Washington to establish a foothold in the nation’s capitol. She approached Carl Engel, the Library’s music chief, about the possibility of adding a small concert hall to the Library’s voluptuous — and voluminous — Thomas Jefferson building, designed after the Paris opera house and completed in 1897. You can’t see the hall from the outside, as it’s tucked inside the building’s Northwest Courtyard.

Eager to get started, Coolidge wrote a check for $60,000 to the Librarian of Congress, Herbert Putnam, on Nov. 12, 1924. And yet there was no legal mechanism in place for a civilian to make such a monetary gift to the U.S. government. Congress worked quickly, taking only a little over a month to pass a bill allowing such a contribution.

It took less than six months to build the hall itself — the intimate, 485-seat Coolidge Auditorium, with its warm precise acoustics. “There are a lot of secrets to it,” McLean says. “The back wall of the auditorium is slightly shaved to be concave and extremely responsive to string sound. Underneath the stage is hollow. But that hollowness is a factor, as is the cork floor, which was very unusual for its time.” McLean says the sound blossoms in the hall. Keen to spread the sound far and wide, Coolidge even had the building wired for the relatively new medium of radio. She added to her initial sum to establish a fund for the commissioning of new music. Engel dubbed her “The Fairy-God-Mother of Music.”

Coolidge was well-connected and fiercely advocated for music. In 1944, she took to the local Washington airwaves with another bold idea. “I could wish for music, the same governmental protection that is given to hygiene, education or public welfare,” she said over WTOP. “How wonderful, if we could have in the cabinet, a secretary of fine arts.”

Coolidge never got her wish, but what she had already created was arguably more important — a living, breathing concert hall that serves as a cultural beacon — preserving history and cultivating new music through commissions.

Perhaps the most famous commission became one of America’s most iconic pieces of music. Aaron Copland‘s ballet Appalachian Spring, written for dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, received its world premiere at Coolidge Auditorium on Oct. 30, 1944. “I think people knew what they were hearing,” McLean says. The ballet would win the Pulitzer prize for music the following year, along with the New York Music Critics Circle Award. It’s hard to imagine a full ballet produced on Coolidge’s modestly-sized stage.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: One of music’s best kept secrets celebrates 100 years, quietly : NPR

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Letters from an American – October 13, 2025 – Heather Cox Richardson

Letters from an American, October 13, 2025

By Heather Cox Richardson, Oct 13, 2025

Last Tuesday, President Donald J. Trump showed to Canadian officials a plan for a triumphal arch that would sit on the banks of the Potomac River opposite the Lincoln Memorial in a traffic rotary at the Virginia end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge below Arlington National Cemetery. The idea, apparently, is to build the arch to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the United States in July 2026.

On Thursday, the White House press pool reported, the plan was laid out on Trump’s desk in the Oval Office. The massive stone arch appears to be the same height as or taller than the Lincoln Memorial. Early in the morning on Saturday, October 11, Trump posted on social media an artist’s rendering of what such an arch might look like, complete with what appears to be a gold winged victory statue at the top of the arch.

Triumphal arches are free-standing structures consisting of one or more arches crowned with a flat top for engravings or statues. They hark back to ancient Rome, where leaders built them to commemorate military victories or significant public events. Those arches inspired others, like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France, built to honor those who died in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

Observers immediately noted that the photographed plan showed the Lincoln Memorial facing the wrong way, and compared the Trump Arch both to the Arc de Triomphe and to another arch modeled on it: the German Arch of Triumph proposed by Adolph Hitler to commemorate Germany’s victory in World War II.

That triumphal arch was never built.

Architect Eric Jenkins told Daniel Jonas Roche of The Architect’s Newspaper that the proposed arch would disrupt the symbolic connection between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. The two are connected not only by the Arlington Memorial Bridge, but also by the Civil War. During that war, the nation began to bury its hallowed dead on the grounds of the former home of General Robert E. Lee, who led the troops of the Confederacy. Lee’s Arlington House sits directly behind the memorial to Lincoln, who led the United States to stop the Confederates from dismantling the nation.

The proposed construction of a triumphal arch contrasts with the expected sale and probable demolition of the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building on Independence Avenue in Washington, D.C. Completed in 1940, the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building was built to house the Social Security Board, the precursor to the Social Security Administration.

In August 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act. That law established a federal system of old-age benefits; unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children; funds to promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services. It was a sweeping reworking of the relationship between the government and its citizens, using the power of taxation to pool funds to provide a basic social safety net.

The vision of government behind the Social Security Act was very different from that of the Republicans who had run it in the 1920s. While men like President Herbert Hoover had embraced the idea of a “rugged individualism” in which men provided for their families on their own, those behind the Social Security Act recognized that the vision of a hardworking man supporting his wife and children was more myth than reality. They replaced that vision with one in which the government recognized that all Americans were equally valuable.

Their reworking of American government came from the conditions of the United States after the rise of modern industry. Americans had always depended on community, but the harsh conditions of industrialization in the late nineteenth century had made it clear that the government must protect that community. City governments like New York City’s Tammany Hall began to provide a basic system of social welfare for voters, making sure that they had jobs, food, and shelter and that women and children had a support network if a husband or father died.

Editor’s Note: Please subscribe if you can. Heather provides insights into the legal fiasco, Trump, legal challenges, and more.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: October 13, 2025 – by Heather Cox Richardson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Opinion

Meet us on the rail trail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5 takeways on RFK Jr. and vaccine policy from former CDC director’s Senate testimony – The Washington Post

Democracy Dies in Darkness

Health Health Care Medical Mysteries Science Well+Being

Takeaways from fired CDC director’s Senate testimony

Susan Monarez told the Senate health committee that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pressured her to back changes to the childhood vaccine schedule.

Updated, September 17, 2025 at 3:05 p.m. EDT, 57 minutes ago, 9 min

Key moments from ex-CDC chief’s Senate testimony

By Rachel Roubein, Dan Diamond and Mariana Alfaro

Susan Monarez, who was fired last month as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told senators Wednesday that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pressured her to support changes to the childhood vaccine schedule, subverting the agency’s scientific expertise and endangering public health.

The former CDC chief who served in the position for only 29 days, told the Senate’s health committee that Kennedy told her that “he spoke to the president every day about changing the childhood vaccine schedule” and that she “needed to be on board” with coming changes in September. The recommendations from the CDC call for administering multiple vaccines at key milestones, and potential changes to the schedule have alarmed major medical associations who worry the nation’s vaccine infrastructure may crack.

Monarez’s testimony on Capitol Hill marks her first public appearance since the White House fired her in late August. She told the panel she was fired for “holding the line on scientific integrity,” citing concerns about her ability to continue leading the agency while “preserving evidence-based decision-making.”

Throughout the hearing, some senators critical of Kennedy, who has an extensive history of anti-vaccine advocacy, sought to highlight what they believe is at stake: the potential for infectious diseases to reemerge and erosion of trust in public health.Some Republican senators allied with Kennedy pressed Monarez on the details of her meetings with Kennedy, casting her as out of step with the Trump administration and suggesting she was not trustworthy.

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

Continue/Read Original Article Here: 5 takeways on RFK Jr. and vaccine policy from former CDC director’s Senate testimony – The Washington Post

#2025 #America #CDC #CentersForDiseaseControlAndPrevention #DonaldTrump #FormerDirectorCDC #HealthAndHumanServices #History #JFKJr #JohnFKennedyJr #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #Politics #Science #SusanMonarez #Trump #USSenate #UnitedStates

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

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

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

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

Early Life and Formation

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

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

Academic Excellence and Early Career

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

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

Government Service and Private Practice

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

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

Marriage and Family Life

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

Path to the Supreme Court

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

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

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

Judicial Philosophy and Constitutional Interpretation

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

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

Major Opinions and Legal Impact

Healthcare and Federal Power

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

Civil Rights and Voting

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

Presidential Power

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

Race and Education

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

Leadership Style and Court Dynamics

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

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

The Roberts-Barrett Partnership: Mentorship and Judicial Alliance

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

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

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

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

Legacy and Long-Term Impact

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

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

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

Bibliography and Sources

Primary Sources:

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

Government and Institutional Sources:

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

Academic and Scholarly Sources:

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

News and Analysis Sources:

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

Roberts-Barrett Relationship Sources:

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

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

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

 The Hemingway Society

A Tribute to Patrick Hemingway with Sandra Spanier

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Listen to the podcast, also on many podcast platforms.

September 10, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

#12Members #2025 #America #AuthoritarianRulings #BadDecisions #BalancedCourt #Books #DonaldTrump #Education #ExpandSCOTUS #History #ImmunityForTRUMP #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Politics #Resistance #RightWing #RightWingJustices #Science #SCOTUS #SupremeCourt #Trump #TrumpAdministration #TrumpCourt #UnitedStates

Accelerating AI adoption for the US government – The Official Microsoft Blog

Official Microsoft Blog

Accelerating AI adoption for the US government

Sep 2, 2025 | Chris Barry – CVP for US Public Sector Industries

Today, Microsoft and the US General Services Administration (GSA) announced a comprehensive agreement to bring a suite of productivity, cloud and AI services, including Microsoft 365 Copilot at no cost for up to 12 months for millions of existing Microsoft G5 users, to help agencies rapidly adopt secure and compliant advanced AI tools that will enhance operations, strengthen security and accelerate innovation for the American people.

As an unparalleled milestone in advancing GSA’s OneGov strategy, Microsoft’s offerings will be available through a governmentwide unified pricing strategy that is expected to drive $3 billion in cost savings in the first year alone.

Enabling AI innovation and acceleration for federal agencies

This expansive offering will help agencies achieve key pillars of the America’s AI Action Plan by enabling federal agencies to serve at the forefront on driving AI innovation and adoption in service to the American people. Through this agreement federal agencies will access the latest AI capabilities at scale, now integrated in many of the products they already use, to achieve key administration priorities:

• Transforming productivity with AI: A unique Microsoft 365 and Copilot suite, offered exclusively to the federal government, enables agencies to automate workflows, analyze data and collaborate more efficiently, freeing public servants to focus on their core mission.
• Driving automation with AI agents: With AI agents, and no per-agent fees, agencies can build solutions for citizen inquiries, case management and contact centers, extending the reach and responsiveness of government services.
• Accelerating cloud modernization: With significant Azure discounts and the waiving of data egress fees, agencies can modernize infrastructure, reduce barriers to interagency collaboration and unlock the full power of advanced analytics and AI.
• Streamlining government operations: Dynamics 365 applications help agencies enhance citizen service, optimize supply chains and increase field responsiveness, directly impacting everyday public outcomes.
• Strengthening security across all levels: Integrated platforms such as Microsoft Entra ID and Sentinel provide advanced identity and threat protection, supporting the Zero Trust journey across federal environments.

Federal agencies can opt-in to any or all of these offers through September 2026, with discounted pricing available for up to 36 months.

Continue/Read Original Article: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2025/09/02/accelerating-ai-adoption-for-the-us-government/

#2025 #America #AmericaSAIActionPlan #DonaldTrump #Education #GeneralServicesAdministration #GSA #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Microsoft #Microsoft365Copilot #MicrosoftAI #Politics #Resistance #Science #Technology #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates #Writing

Monthly U.S. Elections Summary: August 2025

Monthly U.S. Elections Summary: August 2025

Here is the August 2025 summary update on major U.S. news and political trends as the nation heads toward the November 2026 elections, with current charts for Trump’s approval and congressional control signals. This report is prepared monthly by Perplexity Pro especially for and edited by DrWeb’s Domain.

Politics

• The 2026 midterm elections will decide all House seats, over a third of Senate seats, dozens of governorships, and many local offices, making it a pivotal contest for both parties.
• Democrats are currently leading in generic congressional ballot polling by 3–4 points, indicating an early advantage for potential House gains, while Senate forecasts favor notable Democratic advances due to Republican seat exposure in competitive states.

Economy

• Inflation remains voters’ top concern in late August 2025, with public mood sensitive to rising prices and economic performance, both likely to heavily influence campaign agendas in the coming months.

Social Issues

• Crime and immigration are high-profile topics for the electorate, matched by significant attention to global events such as conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East.
• Persistent partisan and demographic divides are evident in polling, suggesting continued polarization on key issues and strategies targeted by both parties.

Key Events

• Special congressional elections and 2026 primary dates are in motion, with each new cycle update potentially affecting momentum and party margins going into next year.

Charts

Trump’s Approval Ratings (August 2025)

• Trump’s approval: 44.1%
• Trump’s disapproval: 52.4%

Chart: Trump approval vs disapproval trend line for August 2025

House and Senate Control Signals (2026 Outlook)

• Democrats lead House polling by +3.7 points
• Senate models project Democratic net gains (+5 seats)

Chart: Bar chart showing current indicators for congressional control by party

This update tracks the latest polling, major issues, and election process milestones, with charts refreshed monthly through November 2026.

Top 7 Sources for Reference

1. 2026 United States elections overview
   Comprehensive Wikipedia summary: federal, statewide, local races; generic ballot polling; mayoral/county races; opinion polling tables.
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_United_States_elections
2. August 2025 Harvard CAPS / Harris Poll results
   Trump approval rating, top voter issues, polarization, inflation vs. immigration priorities, policy support splits.
   https://harvardharrispoll.com/press-release-august-2025/
3. Sabato’s Crystal Ball: Ballot model: Democrats favored
   Conditional forecasts for House/Senate seat change; regression analysis; impact of seat exposure and generic ballot.
   https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/generic-ballot-model-gives-democrats-strong-chance-to-take-back-house-in-2026/
4. Nate Silver Bulletin: Trump approval rating aggregator
   Daily composite Trump approval/disapproval; historical net approval vs. previous presidents at same point; reliability notes.
   https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-silver-bulletin
5. USAPP Blog: LSE ‘The road to the 2026 midterms’ series
   Calendar of 2025–2026 elections; special/primary/off-year races; Senate seat analysis and party control implications.
   https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2025/06/04/the-road-to-the-2026-midterm-elections/
6. Ballotpedia: Special Elections to the 119th Congress
   Dates, districts, results, implications for House/Senate control.
   https://ballotpedia.org/Special_elections_to_the_119th_United_States_Congress_(2025-2026)
7. Generic ballot poll aggregation – RCP/DDHQ
   RealClearPolitics, Decision Desk HQ, poll aggregators for current generic ballot and party lead data.
   See references/links inside Wikipedia and Sabato’s Crystal Ball cited above

Monthly summary compiled August 26, 2025. Next update: September 2025.

#2025 #America #August2025 #DonaldTrump #DrWebSDomain #Elections #Health #History #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Reading #Resistance #Science #Trump #TrumpAdministration #USElections #UnitedStates

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

Good foreign policy depends on good information

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump administration rewrites and scales back annual human rights report – BBC

By Tom Bateman, State Department correspondent

The Trump administration has significantly rewritten and downscaled the US government’s annual report on global human rights abuses.

The document, previously seen as the most comprehensive study of its kind by any government, significantly reduces criticism of some US allies such as Israel and El Salvador while escalating disapproval of perceived foes such as Brazil and South Africa.

Entire sections included in reports from previous years are also eliminated, dramatically reducing coverage of issues including government corruption and persecution of LGBTQ+ individuals.

State department officials say it had been “restructured” to “remove redundancies” and “increase readability”.

The report also describes the human rights situation as having “worsened” in major European democracies, including the UK, France and Germany.

The language used echoes previous criticism by the Trump administration and some US tech bosses who oppose online harm reduction laws in some European countries, portraying them as attacks on free speech.

Uzra Zeya, a former senior state department official who now runs the charity Human Rights First, accused the Trump administration of “gutting” decades of highly respected work on human rights protections and an “abandonment of core values” to the US.

“It sends a signal that there’s going to be a free pass from the United States government, that it will look the other way if a government is willing to cut deals or do the bidding of this administration,” she told the BBC.

The report accuses the UK of “significant human rights issues”, including “credible reports of serious restrictions on freedom of expression”. It also describes prosecution and punishment for human rights abuses as “inconsistent”.

Brazil, which the Trump administration has frequently criticised, was singled out in the state department report for “disproportionate action to undermine freedom of speech”.

Both the UK and Brazil have previously rejected similar criticism from the US.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Trump administration rewrites and scales back annual human rights report

#2025 #America #BBC #BBCNews #DonaldTrump #Health #History #HumanRights #HumanRightsReport #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #Politics #Resistance #Science #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

How I wrote the newest Sherlock Holmes novel – The Spectator World

By Gareth Rubin

How I wrote the newest Sherlock Holmes novel

It wasn’t so elementary, Watson, Wednesday, July 23, 2025

I don’t think anyone has ever come up with a word to describe an authorized author. It’s not quite a tautology. The writer, who has been invited to write a novel continuing the body of work of another, might, possibly, be an example of literary parthenogenesis. Or, more pejoratively, karaoke.

Who knows? But either way, it’s a growth industry. You will have seen the new authorized James Bond novels, the recently crafted Miss Marple and George Smiley outings that have appeared on the bookstore shelves over the past few years to some fanfare – despite the fact that those characters’ creators are very much pushing up the daisies. No, the mortality status of said celebrated novelists is no barrier – perhaps it’s even an incentive – to fans of the series rushing out and handing over their cash for the work featuring their favorite sleuth or spy.

In those cases, the literary estate of Ian Fleming, for instance, will have authorized the new book in return for a cut of the proceeds. But sometimes – perhaps more strangely – the originators are alive and kicking but don’t fancy another ten months in front of their laptop, and so they subcontract the work. Hence, Lee Child can still introduce his latest smash-hit Jack Reacher thriller to a hungry readership, without hiding the fact that the actual words were written by his brother Andrew. Either way, the arrangement leaves everyone content and fulfilled.

I know whereof I speak. When it was announced that the Conan Doyle literary estate had authorized me to write a new Sherlock Holmes novel, the first question I was publicly asked was whether I thought I was up to the job. After all, Holmes is a uniquely popular character, listed in the Guinness World Records as the most-portrayed human literary creation, with hundreds of films and television shows about him. But I do, as it happens, think I’m up to it. I wouldn’t have written it otherwise, would I?

Holmes and Moriarty was published in the US this past May, with near-simultaneous publication in a wide range of European countries. My literary agent, Jon, came up with the idea. He had previously published the last two authorized Holmes novels, written by Anthony Horowitz, and was therefore in touch with the Conan Doyle estate, made up of Sir Arthur’s descendants. They were interested in finding a new author to continue their ancestor’s legacy, and my previous Gothic-tinged Victorian-set mystery, The Turnglass, had been a Sunday Times bestseller, so they wanted to know what I would do with Holmes.

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

Continue/Read Original Article Here: How I wrote the newest Sherlock Holmes novel – The Spectator World

#2025 #America #ArthurConanDoyle #Books #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Novels #Reading #SherlockHolmes #TheSpectator #TheSpectatorWorld #UnitedStates #Writing

Republicans Are Cutting Medicare. Not Only Medicaid, Medicare. – The American Prospect

Home Politics
Republicans Are Cutting Medicare. Not Only Medicaid, Medicare.

Passage of the Big Beautiful Bill will force mandatory sequestration that will mean half a trillion dollars in Medicare cuts.

by David Dayen, July 3, 2025

Francis Chung / POLITICO via AP Images. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks with reporters ahead of a final vote on a budget reconciliation bill for President Trump’s legislative agenda, July 3, 2025, at the U.S. Capitol.

Welcome to “Trump’s Beautiful Disaster,” a pop-up newsletter about the Republican tax and spending bill, one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in a generation. Sign up for the newsletter to get it in your in-box.

It’s always appropriate to bet on the House Freedom Caucus caving to their leader Donald Trump. That’s what happened at 3:20 a.m. this morning, when various assurances, including a potential second reconciliation bill for the 2026 fiscal year, flipped all of them to yes on the Republican mega-bill, which takes food and medicine away from the most vulnerable people in America to give the wealthiest a tax cut.

Those Freedom Caucus members, and all but one member of the Republican caucus, voted early this morning on the rule governing debate on the bill. Before the vote on final passage, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries unleashed an epic speech that has passed the six-hour mark and is still going. It is a kind of talking filibuster, afforded through the tradition of the “magic minute” granted to the opposition leader. But it is just delaying the inevitable: Republicans have the votes in the House to pass the Senate bill unchanged, after several members spent a week railing against the betrayal of changes made that added more debt, weakened the phaseout of clean-energy tax credits, inserted a corrupt deal that will incentivize states to make more payment errors in their SNAP program, and deepened cuts to Medicaid, which will bring the health system to the brink of devastation.

But now Republicans have created another problem. They didn’t just cut Medicaid; they also have forced nearly half a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicare, the health program for the elderly.

Because of a statutory requirement to automatically impose budget cuts when legislation increases the deficit, the Big Beautiful Bill would require automatic sequestration cuts across the board, something that has been confirmed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) but has been largely absent from the debate over the bill. Medicare is one of the programs that will face the axe, and the damage sums to $490 billion over the next ten years, starting in the next fiscal year that begins in October. While many of the safety-net cuts in the bill are delayed to help Republicans with their re-election campaigns, the Medicare cuts must begin next year.

Read more: Republicans Are Cutting Medicare. Not Only Medicaid, Medicare. – The American ProspectSource Links: Republicans Are Cutting Medicare. Not Only Medicaid, Medicare. – The American Prospect

#2025 #America #DonaldTrump #Health #History #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #Politics #Resistance #Science #TheAmericanProspect #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

#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.
#Trump #sexism #idiocracy

`What Morton called "Spanish" were the tresillo and habanera rhythms of the Cuban contradanza ("habanera"). Morton demonstrated the "tinge" to Alan Lomax in the 1938 Library of Congress recordings. What is known in Latin music as the habanera rhythm is also known as the congo, tango-congo, and tango`

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Tinge

#jellyRollMorton #jazz #history #music #rhythm #spanish #tango #contradanza #habanera #alanLomax #libraryOfCongress #latinMusic #congo