Donald Trump more crazy middle of the night screeds to violate American First Amendment Rights

 Heather Cox Richardson Letter from an American July 11, 2026

Department of Justice has subpoenaed reporters from the New York Times over a story the newspaper published. 

Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager, and Eric Schmitt reported that the Secret Service had security concerns about the Trump emolument violation new Air Force One Boeing 747-8 given to the U.S. by Qatar. So, when tensions escalated with Iran while Trump was in Türkiye for the NATO summit, they asked the president to use one of the other, older, Air Force One planes for his return journey.

Trump and White House officials pushed back strongly against the idea that the new plane had any security problems after pouring what appears to have been hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into renovating the plane. But, according to Adam Gramegna of Military . com, U.S. officials told CBS News that the speed with which the plane was rushed into service meant that it does not have the same protections as the older planes.

According to Devlin Barrett, Glenn Thrush, and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, the story that his prized plane was not as good as the older ones enraged Trump, and the White House called in FBI director Kash Patel to find the two anonymous sources who leaked it. Patel spent about 8 hours on Friday running an investigation from the White House, rather than FBI headquarters, before the reporters received the subpoenas.


U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton, whom Trump has nominated to be the next director of national intelligence, issued the subpoenas. The reporters are ordered to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Wednesday “in regard to an alleged violation of federal criminal law.” The Department of Justice said the subpoenas are related to “the crime of leaking national security information.”

The Justice Department emphasized that “reporters are not the targets. Those leaking classified information are.” But issuing subpoenas to U.S. journalists, who are protected from government interference by the First Amendment, is a huge red flag. As former Time magazine editor Rick Stengel noted: “The reporting that the Times journalists have been subpoenaed for is exactly the kind of journalism the First Amendment is designed to protect: matters involving national security and taxpayer dollars. Reporting that embarrasses a president is protected speech.”

David McCraw, senior vice president and deputy general counsel for the Times, said: “The appearance of Federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects. Our journalists report the facts and advance the American public’s right to know how their government is operating and their taxpayer dollars are being used. This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.”

By 11:18 PM on Friday, Trump’s fury had turned back to Iran. He posted on social media that if Iran tried to assassinate him, “Locked and Loaded” missiles would begin to rain down on the country “to completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran—PRAISE BE TO ALLAH!”  (Maine Writer: Obviously this bullshit 💩💩is an insult to Allah and all Christians should be disgusted by this inappropriate language.)

Today he turned his anger toward those questioning his mental acuity, particularly New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman, who commented on MS NOW about his reference in Türkiye to the “Islamic State of Japan.” At 12:23 PM he lashed out at “Maggot Hagerman” and then, to refute her claims, wrote that he “just finished a perfect physical at Walter Reed, I do it every six months, and I requested another Cognitive Test, the only President to do so, three times, and I aced them all—Got every question right. Few people in Washington, D.C., could do so, including Maggot and her flunky associate, Jonathan Swan. I would be willing to bet they couldn’t get 50% of the questions right.”

The White House said Trump was referring to a physical he underwent in May.

Then, at 3:16, the president’s account posted a screed of almost 450 words complaining angrily that “I win the Election IN A LANDSLIDE against the entire Dumocrat Party,…against almost 100% negative press and Fake News,…especially Maggot Hagerman, one of the most unattractive people in the News “Business,” and her lightweight assistant, Jonathan Swan…. All I do is WIN, often against all odds,” yet no one compliments him on his great successes.

Here he may have had in mind Thursday’s news story from Catherine Rampell of The Bulwark about his claim on social media on Monday that Walmart would be “dropping the price of ground beef by almost 15 percent” “at my Administration’s request.” Rampell reported that a Walmart spokesperson told her a different story: the price cuts were part of usual summer rollbacks, which had begun the week before Trump took credit for them. Rampell noted that Trump “looks for opportunities to slap his name on politically useful things that companies were already planning to do—seasonal sales, major investments, hiring, et very much cetera.”

White House spokesperson Kush Desai clarified on social media that the president’s “announcement was that the sale is extending all summer long,” adding, “The media’s obsessive need to try to undermine any good news when it affects President Trump is pathological.”

A rant about the news media took up most of Trump’s long post, as he insisted that those reporting his bad poll numbers and policy failures “have no credibility…. If the Election was held again today, I would win by even more—Actually, much more!” he posted. “The Dumocrats don’t have what it takes, their Policies are wrong, and they are, generally, stupid people. They are going COMMUNIST because they are a desperately ‘sinking ship,’ and there’s not a thing they can do about it.

“Instead of writing inaccurate, false articles, for over 10 years now, shouldn’t it be time that they say, ‘We give up, we can’t beat him, there seems nothing we can do.’ Isn’t it time they say, ‘TRUMP IS THE BEST POLITICAL ATHLETE OF ALL TIME! CONGRATULATIONS, MR. PRESIDENT. YOU HAVE BEATEN US FOR 10 YEARS, AND WE ARE NOT GOING TO WASTE OUR TIME FIGHTING YOU ANY LONGER. WE CAN’T WIN. DO A GREAT JOB, SIR, RUNNING OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!’”

Journalist Aaron Rupar used a common meme often used to respond to unreasonably long posts. “I ain’t reading all that,” he commented. “I’m happy for u tho. Or sorry that happened.” Conservative lawyer George Conway wrote: “A severely mentally ill man has control of the launch codes for America’s nuclear arsenal, but it doesn’t seem that many people care.”

Almost 450 words evidently weren’t enough. At 4:54 he reiterated the themes of the long post in a shorter one, then a minute later, accused “the Dumocrats” of being communists. A minute after that, he claimed: “The Radical Left Lunatics, often referred to as Dumocrats, have lost control of their Party.”

Apparently, media criticism still stung. At 5:27, Trump took on reports of the high cost of his damaging renovations in Washington, D.C. Posting photos of what he said was “the horrible front of the White House,” he continued: “The Radical Left Dumocrats criticize me for spending so much time bringing our White House back to the Glory of 100 years ago—Actually, it will be far better than that, and they will not shame us for bringing our Great and Brilliant Monuments to the past and the future back to levels never seen before. This is what we are doing all over Washington, D.C., and, in different ways, with our Country, itself!”

But his confidence that American voters will support Republicans in the 2026 elections is shaky enough that he continues to call for the Senate to rig them. At 6:07 he reposted what purported to be a poll from right-wing loyalist Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) claiming that 97.2% of supporters want the Senate to take up the voter suppression SAVE America Act when it goes back into session next week, while only 2.8% want the Senate to take up “Anything else.”

Meanwhile, on Friday a Pentagon official told Rebecca Turco of WJLA 7News in Washington, D.C., that National Guard troops will stay activated in Washington through Inauguration Day 2029 “until law and order are fully restored in our Nation’s Capital.”

“So,” Bill Kristol of The Bulwark commented. “[M]ilitary troops under the direct control of Trump and Hegseth will be on the streets of our nation’s capital for the rest of Trump’s term. The rationale—they’re here to help with a crime emergency—is laughable. But of course the real reason is ominous.”
Notes:

https://www.military.com/justice-department-subpoenas-reporters-air-force-one-security

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/08/us/politics/trump-air-force-one-security.html

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/11/g-s1-133160/justice-department-subpoenas-new-york-times-reporters-over-air-force-one-reporting

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/us/politics/air-force-one-trump-cost.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/11/us/politics/white-house-patel-investigation-times.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/11/business/media/new-york-times-trump-subpoenas.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-walmart-beef-white-house-b3012769.html

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-he-just-finished-physical-walter-reed-2026-07-11/

https://cbs4local.com/news/nation-world/national-guard-washington-dc-pentagon-donald-trump-dc-safe-and-beautiful-mission-metropolitan-police-department-mpd-anti-crime-freedom-250-crime-federal-law-enforcement-emergency-executive-order-7news-district-of-columbia

Americans are not informed about the huge cost of the Donald Trump Iran War but check out European news

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The Guardian: Generally speaking, when you bomb another country, and that country retaliates, you call it a “war”. Very simple word. Three letters. Even Donald Trump knows how to spell it.

Cost of Donald Trump's Iran War

Echo opinion letter published in The CapTimes news in Wisconsin

Dear Editor: The lies and obfuscation about the true cost of the Iran War by Donald Trump and his minions evoke shades of the Vietnam era.

In a well-documented report in Popular Information by Stephen Semler on May 6, 2026, the actual cost of the first 60 days of the current war with Iran is about 💲72 billion, not the 💲25 billion cited by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, or about 💲1.2 billion per day.

Furthermore, a group of reporters for the Washington Post, Evan Hill, Jarrett Ley, Alex Horton, Tara Copp and Dan Lamothe, have noted that it's "unusually difficult" to obtain satellite imagery from the Middle East, because the U.S. government has asked two of the largest commercial providers of such images, Ventor and Planet, "to limit, delay or ultimately withhold publication of images of the region while the war is ongoing." 

Since the companies have acceded, the journalists have had to review other sources of images, including the European Union and Iran's state affiliated media (as cited by Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, May 6, 2026).

Although some hypocritical Republican members of our U.S. Congress may not be concerned about being complicit with the Trump administration's deceptions, the American public deserves to know the truth. Then the electorate can hold Congress accountable in the November 2026, midterm elections.

From Stephen Austin in Madison Wisconsin

Donald Trump and maga Republicans have not yet explained why the American military must be put in harm's way in Iraq

Heather Cox Richardson and Timothy Snyder have become reliable prophets in predicting how Donald Trump continues to pursue the dismantling of American democracy.  Cox Richardson compared Donald Trump's demonic intentions to the actions of Adolf Hitler, as she published in November 2024 in the Milwaukee Independent:  "Adolf Hitler’s, on January 30, 1933, took an oath of office, in which he promised Germans he would uphold the constitution, and in three months he dismantled that constitution. By March, the concentration camp Dachau was open. Its first prisoners were not Jews, but rather Hitler’s prominent political opponents. By April, Jews had been purged from the civil service, and opposition political parties were illegal. By May, labor unions were banned and students were burning banned books. Within the year, public criticism of Hitler and the Nazis was illegal, and denouncing violators paid well for those who did it."

This echo opinion published in The New Yorker describes the evil result of that and other dire predictions about Donald Trump.

The First Casualty of Trump’s War in Iran Was the Truth

(Donald Trump has no idea what the five letter  one syllable word means.)

The cruelest irony is that Donald Trump addresses the Iranian people in the language of liberation and then threatens freedom of the press back home. By David Remnick editor of The New Yorker magazine.

In war, truth is the first casualty.” It’s a line often attributed to Aeschylus, and it has never lost its relevance. Sometimes the culprit is the observer—the propagandizing correspondent, the mythologizing historian. Now, three weeks into a war of choice, the chief offender is the President of the United States.

On February 28th, at two-thirty in the morning, the White House press operation released a prerecorded video of Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago standing at a lectern in dim light. Wearing an oversized U.S.A. ball cap and no tie, the President announced that he had ordered American bombers to commence destroying targets throughout the Islamic Republic of Iran. Trump made a claim of preëmption. He was acting, he said, to “defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.” (This was confusing. Hadn’t Trump declared last June that he had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program? Hadn’t the Omani foreign minister, a mediator between the U.S. and Iran at negotiations in Geneva, just told “Face the Nation” that “a peace deal is within our reach”?) Trump went on to counsel the Iranian people to find refuge somehow—“It’s very dangerous outside, bombs will be dropping everywhere”—but then, at some unspecified moment, they should “take over” their government. “Let’s see how you respond.” And to his American listeners, he admitted, “We may have casualties. That often happens in war.”

For a narcissist obsessed with the projection of strength and grandeur, Trump gave a peculiarly gravity-free performance. The bill of his ball cap obscured his gaze. He raced and rambled through his text. And, rather than hustle back to the White House, he lingered at his country club. He had a fund-raising dinner to attend. It was left to the communications director, Steven Cheung, to provide clear instructions on how to react to the prospect of another American war in the Middle East. “NO PANICANS!” he wrote on X. “TRUST IN TRUMP!”

Donald Trump, together with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, were soon over heard lauding the precision with which they had “decapitated” the Iranian leadership and flattened military, police, and intelligence installations. And yet, as the late Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once blithely said, in the thick of America’s catastrophic misadventure in Iraq, “Stuff happens.” 

(Hmmm, turns out the Rumsfeld decisions cost Americans 2,400 military lives in his failed Afghanistan war and another 4,400 were killed in the Iraq disaster. Donald Rumsfeld died on June 29, 2021 in Taos, New Mexico.) With increasing frequency, Trump berates reporters (particularly female reporters). He sues media outlets for sport. Resolve is in short supply. The owner of the Washington Post, the newspaper of Watergate, has done irreparable violence to his property merely to stay in Trump’s good graces. But, while Donald Trump has little regard for the freedom of the press, he craves its ceaseless attention. 

Donald Trump's need has the quality of addiction. In Washington these days, there is hardly a reporter who does not have the President’s cellphone number. It is said that the best time to call is late at night while he is watching himself on TV and shit-posting in his pajamas. He loves to muse aloud, then watch as those musings register in foreign capitals, and in the markets. Lately, he has been willing to say anything. The war will be over soon. Or maybe not. Whatever. Each pseudo-scoop is as ephemeral as a mayfly. But who can resist? When asked about the possibility of sending his infantry into Iran, he answers in the language of golf: “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground.” At other moments, he simply changes the subject to, say, his taste in interior decoration—“If you look behind me, see the nice gold curtains.” Are you not entertained? 

Donald Trump's cult advisers, of course, know what to do. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, (aka "Whiskey Pete") who has cracked down on actual reporting at the Pentagon and has filled his pressroom with “influencers” and propagandists, spoke in his usual tone of rage recently when he lambasted CNN’s coverage of the war as “fake news.” He would be pleased, he said, when the Trump-friendly Ellison family, which has already swallowed up CBS News, finally takes possession of CNN, too. Brendan Carr, who runs the Federal Communications Commission for Trump, eagerly joined the fray by threatening to revoke the licenses of television networks that are, in his view, “running hoaxes and news distortions.” 

Trump pronounced himself “thrilled” with Carr’s outburst. On Truth Social, he accused “Highly Unpatriotic ‘News’ Organizations” of airing “LIES.” Perhaps, he wrote, he will prosecute unruly journalists on “Charges for TREASON.” 

Carr’s saber rattling threats to pull network licenses have no legal weight; the more immediate danger is that media owners, who are all too aware of the economic pressures they face, will quietly cut back on critical coverage of the Trump Presidency in general, and the war in particular. They will fear landing outside the boundary of what is deemed patriotic. The historian Garry Wills, in an essay on Phillip Knightley’s 1975, book about wartime journalism, “The First Casualty,” wrote, “A liberal democracy submits to propaganda more readily than a totalitarian state. Self‐censorship is always more effective than bureaucratic censorship.” 

The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of the Iranian security hierarchy, would not survive the first day of bombing; neither would about a hundred and seventy-five innocents in the southern city of Minab, most of them children. When asked about a girls’ school there, which was struck by what was likely an American cruise missile, Trump blamed Iran. “They are very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions,” he said.

Now, as war has engulfed both the region and the global economy, Trump and his sycophantic advisers have taken to improvising on the fly, floating conflicting justifications for war and predictions about its duration. The Iranians were close to developing missiles that could reach the U.S. (They weren’t.) They were weeks away from building a nuclear weapon. (They weren’t.) Israel forced America’s hand. (Marco Rubio.) “No, I might have forced their hand.” (Trump.) It’s all about regime change. (Trump.) It’s not about regime change. (Trump, later.) When confronted with these contradictions and falsehoods, all Donald Trump's cult of men followed his lead: they just blamed the media.

With increasing frequency, Trump berates reporters (particularly female reporters). He sues media outlets for sport. Resolve is in short supply. The owner of the Washington Post, the newspaper of Watergate, has done irreparable violence to his property merely to stay in Trump’s good graces.

But, while Donald Trump has little regard for the freedom of the press, he craves its ceaseless attention. His need has the quality of addiction. In Washington these days, there is hardly a reporter who does not have the President’s cellphone number. It is said that the best time to call is late at night while he is watching himself on TV and shitposting in his pajamas. He loves to muse aloud, then watch as those musings register in foreign capitals, and in the markets. Lately, he has been willing to say anything. The war will be over soon. Or maybe not. Whatever. Each pseudo-scoop is as ephemeral as a mayfly. But who can resist? When asked about the possibility of sending his infantry into Iran, he answers in the language of golf: “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground.” At other moments, he simply changes the subject to, say, his taste in interior decoration—“If you look behind me, see the nice gold curtains.” Are you not entertained?

His advisers, of course, know what to do. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who has cracked down on actual reporting at the Pentagon and has filled his pressroom with “influencers” and propagandists, spoke in his usual tone of rage recently when he lambasted CNN’s coverage of the war as “fake news.” He would be pleased, he said, when the Trump-friendly Ellison family, which has already swallowed up CBS News, finally takes possession of CNN, too.

Brendan Carr, who runs the Federal Communications Commission for Trump, eagerly joined the fray by threatening to revoke the licenses of television networks that are, in his view, “running hoaxes and news distortions.” Trump pronounced himself “thrilled” with Carr’s outburst. On Truth Social, he accused “Highly Unpatriotic ‘News’ Organizations” of airing “LIES.” Perhaps, he wrote, he will prosecute unruly journalists on “Charges for TREASON.”

Carr’s threats to pull network licenses have no legal weight; the more immediate danger is that media owners, who are all too aware of the economic pressures they face, will quietly cut back on critical coverage of the Trump Presidency in general, and the war in particular. They will fear landing outside the boundary of what is deemed patriotic. The historian Garry Wills, in an essay on Phillip Knightley’s 1975 book about wartime journalism, “The First Casualty,” wrote, “A liberal democracy submits to propaganda more readily than a totalitarian state. Self‐censorship is always more effective than bureaucratic censorship.”

The cruelest irony is that Donald Trump, who addresses the Iranian people in the language of liberation, urging them to throw off the yoke of a regime that has brutalized them for decades, is the same man who threatens American journalists with treason charges and tries to strong-arm broadcasters into subservience. 

Having torn up a nuclear agreement in his first term and gone to war with no coherent goal in his second, Trump now directs his fire at the one thing he cannot afford to leave standing: the truth. What’s at stake is democracy’s oldest promise—that the people may call on their government to answer for what it does in their name. ♦








Published in the print edition of the March 30, 2026, issue, with the headline “The First Casualty.”

Americans have a moral responsibility to come together to heal our democratic nation from political anger and division

Echo essay by Maria Shriver published in Sunday Paper "I've been thinking- Waiting for the light."

“All the feels!” my friend Elizabeth texted me the other day. Elizabeth is a writer and a wisdom teacher, and her words always make me pause and think.

Currier and Ives

The hope, the horror, all the feels. That’s how life feels these days, isn’t it? That’s how so many of us feel right now. Scared and hopeful and everything in between.

Everyone is feeling the highs, the lows, and 😔😞disbelief.

Fear has invaded our homes, our schools, our workplaces, and our hearts and minds. Our government has shut down. Our leaders have retreated into their corners. And meanwhile, salaries are stagnant, health care feels impossible to navigate, and parents are afraid to drop off their kids at school. Places of worship also feel unsafe.

It feels like everyone is searching for someone—anyone—to tell them it’s going to be okay.

When I was a child, I would often ask my mother, “Is it going to be okay?” Back then, I knew therewere adults in the room—my parents, our political leaders—to reassure me. They were the ones who stepped forward to speak to the nation as one. They knew it was their duty to instill hope, minimize fear, and steady us. It was their job.

Where are those people today❓

This week, a flight attendant leaned down and asked me, “Who is our voice these days❓ Who can be our voice❓”

Here is my answer: You are. I am. We are. Together.

Years ago, as I sat in the ICU with my mother, a nurse stopped and asked me, “Do you need anything😇❓💙🙏”

Trained by my mother never to need for anything and never to complain, I quickly said, “Oh no, please. Help someone else who has it worse.”

The nurse looked into my tired eyes and said: “There’s no competition here. Everyone in the ICU is having a hard time. Everyone here needs help.”

That truth has stayed with me. That’s what things feel like now.

Life isn’t a competition. It’s not about who has it worse. We all need tending to. We all need help for all our feels.

I know it might sound naïve to speak of hope while we mark the anniversary of October 7, while images from Gaza flood our screens, while young men blow up churches and assassinate leaders, while families struggle with jobs, health care, and rent. But I am betting on the goodness of humanity, even in the face of horror.

I’m choosing to listen to leaders who remind us of empathy, forgiveness, respect, and our moral obligations to one another. Leaders like Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, who asked her congregation what happens when we stop caring. 

Like Pope Leo, who reminded us that no one owns the whole truth and urged greater respect for one another. 

Like Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and New Mexico Gov. Lujan Grisham—leaders from different parties—who modeled how to disagree without contempt or violence. 

And leaders like Texas Rep. James Talarico, who this week spoke out after the government shutdown to remind us that the national budget is a “moral document” and that leaders have a moral obligation to care for Americans. The fight over health care isn’t just about premiums, he said. It’s about people’s access to medicines, treatments, and their ability to live well, heal, and survive.

I’m also choosing to see light in a golfer like Rory McIlroy, who turned heckling into a teaching moment. Golf, he said, is supposed to unite people and be a sport of respect, not abuse, ridicule, or shame. But American fans didn’t treat him and his wife with respect at the Ryder Cup last week. The behavior they endured was appalling, and yet still, Mcllroy urged golf fans to be the hope they want to see in this world, not the horror. He reminded them they could be better.

As for me, I’m choosing to notice when people raise money not only for victims of violence but also for the family of the shooter—because that, too, is modeling another way forward. I’m choosing to listen to teachers, nuns, priests, rabbis—and my brother Timothy, with his dignity movement—who remind me to ask: How can I walk and talk better in this world right now? Because I know I can do better, and I want to try. I really, really do.

In fact, it was with that intention that I engaged in a conversation this past week with someone who is the political opposite of me. 

My friend was vulnerable enough to share that he had fallen victim to his social media algorithm, that it had riled him up even more than usual, and that he was struggling to understand “the left” at all. 

In the past, I would have engaged, gotten into a debate, and gotten heated. This time I just listened and asked him to tell me more. The more we spoke, the calmer he got. He ended by telling me he was deleting his social media for a while.

I get it. So many people tell me they’ve turned off the news and turned away from listening for their own mental health and peace of mind. I understand. I’ve wanted to look away, too. I’m exhausted by it. I loathe the algorithm.

This new poll on political polarization should trouble us all, but it also shows us there is an opportunity waiting in plain sight. For if we all turn away, if we all stop caring, then we risk losingmore than our politics. We risk losing our very hearts and our nation as we know it. 

And as historian Heather Cox Richardson so wisely reminded us this week, this is not a time for partisanship. This is a moment for “We the People” to stand up together if we want to save our democracy.

The other day, someone on my spiritual team advised me that now is the time to “speak in quiet tones.” “No one is listening to one another,” they said. “No one is hearing one another. So allow for silence in between your words. Hold your dignity. Work toward being a pillar. Use your tools. No one is using their tools. If you want to be a vessel in the world—which is what the world needs—you need tools for this moment in time.”

So let us use this moment to model a different way. Let’s look for the tools to lead differently. This is the moment not to join the revenge tour, but instead to listen to those offering a different model, a different tone. It’s the moment to assemble our spiritual support team—a circle of voices who remind us of our better angels. This is the moment to practice empathy, even when it’s hardest.

So the next time you’re tempted to turn away, remember: we are all in the ICU. We are all feeling all the feels. See yourself like that nurse who saw me. Calmly ask the person before you—whether friend, stranger, or someone you disagree with—Do you need anything❓🙏

Then pause. Listen. Wait. Wait for the story. Wait for the light.🌞
⛅☀️
Because the light will come. It always does.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans in Texas use threats to force a vote on redistricting but Democrats broke quorum

Echo essay by Heather Cox Richardson published on Substack in "Letters from an American". 

Democratic lawmakers from the Texas House of Representatives left the state to deny Republican lawmakers the quorum—the number of legislators required to pass legislation—they need in order to push through a new district map that would take five seats currently held by Democrats and give them to Republicans.

Donald J. Trump demanded this rare mid-decade redistricting in an attempt to hold control of the House of Representatives in 2026. He is urging all Republican-dominated states to make a similar change to guarantee Republican dominance regardless of the will of voters.

Republicans in the Texas legislature rushed a bill that would make the new map law through committee on Saturday morning after the one public hearing they held on it showed overwhelming opposition. Sophia Beausoleil of NBC 5 in Dallas–Fort Worth reports that the Texas House would vote on the bill Monday; but Democrats breaking the quorum prevents the bill from being brought up for a vote.

“My Democratic colleagues and I have just left our beloved state to break quorum and stop Trump's redistricting power grab,” Texas state representative James Talarico said in a video posted to social media. “Trump told our Republican colleagues to redraw the political maps here in Texas in the middle of the decade to get him five more seats and protect his majority in Congress. They're turning our districts into crazy shapes to guarantee the outcome they want in the 2026, elections. If this power grab succeeds, they will hang on to power without any accountability from the voters. 

But Texas Democrats are fighting back. They left Texas, breaking quorum and preventing Republicans from silencing their voices and rigging the next election. "We are not fighting for the Democratic Party. We are fighting for the democratic process, and the stakes could not be higher. We have to take a stand,” he said.

Texas legislators traveled to Boston, Massachusetts, and to Albany, New York, to confer with Democratic leaders. About 30 of them, though, went to Chicago, Illinois, where Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker welcomed them at a press conference.

Texas House Democratic Caucus Chair Gene Wu emphasized that the Democrats tried to work with the Republicans, but Texas governor Greg Abbott and Republican lawmakers were forcing the new map through, against the will of the voters, because Trump told them to. Wu’s explanation mirrors that of Republican state representative Cody Vasut, who told Natasha Korecki and Ryan Chandler of NBC News: “This map was politically based, and that’s totally legal, totally allowed and totally fair.”

Wu warned that the attempt to grab five new seats in Texas to maintain control of the U.S. House of Representatives against the will of voters is a threat not only to Texas, but to the entire country and to the concept of America. “If Donald Trump is allowed to do this, if he is allowed to once again cheat and get away with it, there's no stopping this. This will spread across the country, and…will occur everywhere. Because if one person's going to cheat and no one's going to stop it, why doesn't everyone just do it then? And that is not a society, that is not an America that works.”

Wu continued: “Everyone is already tired of the hyperpartisan bickering and all the fighting because we never get anything done. And they are creating a system that will reinforce that and make it even worse. And we're telling people, please come out, stand up against it, rise up and say no more. Enough."

Wu said the Texas Democratic representatives “did not make the decision to come here today…lightly, but we come here today with absolute moral clarity.”

Governor Pritzker has been in contact with the Texas Democrats to plan for such a moment. His staff will provide logistical support to the visiting Texans. Tonight he made it clear that the Texas Democrats’ fight against Trump’s power grab is the fight of all Americans to protect democracy. “Let's be clear,” Pritzker said, “this is not just rigging the system in Texas. It's about rigging the system against the rights of all Americans for years to come.”

Pritzker continued: “Texas Democrats were left no choice but to leave their home state, block a vote from taking place, and protect their constituents. This is a righteous act of courage.” Pritzker urged other Americans to “take a page from these leaders's playbook. When you show people that you have the will to fight, well, they can muster the will to fight, too. Courage is contagious.”

“To be in public office right now is to constantly ask yourself, how do I make sure that we’re standing on the right side of history❓ There's a simple answer. The wrong side of history will always tell you to be afraid. The right side of history will always expect you to be courageous. Expect courage from people around you, and it will show up. Expect fear, and fear will rule the day. Let the courage of these leaders be an example to the rest of the country. I'm proud to stand side by side with our friends from Texas today.”

Tonight U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) told an audience in Phoenix, Arizona: “My former colleagues from the Texas House—those Texas Democrats—decided to get the hell out of Texas…and breaking quorum is where they’re at right now. And they didn’t just do it by themselves—they went to Illinois, where there is a governor that gives a damn. You see, this fight is going to take all of us.”

Crockett’s comments came at tonight’s launch of the “Won’t Back Down” Tour, organized by MoveOn and MeidasTouch, to hold Republicans accountable and organize for 2026. Crockett, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Representative Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) spoke tonight; Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Representative Maxwell Frost (D-FL) will take the tour to Nebraska next.

Texas governor Abbott responded to the Texas House Democrats' quorum break by threatening to remove from office any Democrats who are not back in their seats for Monday’s vote and to replace them “swiftly” with his own appointees thanks to his power to fill vacancies. He also suggested he would consider them felons for accepting money to pay for their food and housing in Chicago and that such a designation would enable him to cross state lines to get them back. He threatened to use “my full extradition authority to demand the return to Texas of any potential out-of-state felons.”

When a reporter asked about Abbott’s threat, Pritzker responded: “They’re here in Illinois. We’re going to do everything we can to protect every single one of them…. It’s the leaders of Texas who are attempting not to follow the law. They’re the ones that need to be held accountable.”

In the Texas legislature, bills can only be introduced during the first 60 days of a regular session unless a four-fifths vote of the members present approves it.  

Politico reports how Texas Governor Abbott and other Texas Republicans face a hard deadline as they are preparing to adopt maps that could net the GOP five seats in the U.S. House, potentially cementing the party’s majority in Congress. Maps need to be completed before the end of the year so that election officials can prepare for the state’s March 3 primaries. The move has also prompted retaliation threats by Democratic governors in other states and roiled expectations for the 2026 elections, when Democrats hope to take the House and act as a check on Donald Trump.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans shoving Project 2025 down American's throats and the side effects are nauseating

Donald Trump  lies about virtually everything and he lied to voters about the deeply unpopular Project 2025, but Americans are now living under the horror of this plan in real time. 🤥 The ramming of this horrible plan down our American throats is disgusting 🤢and unlawful, being accomplished with unauthorized executive orders. 

Echo essay published by Heather Cox Richardson in Letters from an American

On July 2, 2024, just about a year ago, president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation Kevin Roberts told the listeners of Steve Bannon’s War Room webcast: “[W]e are going to win. We’re in the process of taking this country back.” Roberts pointed to the Supreme Court’s decision in Donald J. Trump v. United States the day before giving the president absolute immunity for committing crimes while engaging in official acts.

“That Supreme Court ruling yesterday on immunity is vital, and it's vital for a lot of reasons,” Roberts said, adding that the nation needs a strong leader because “the left has taken over our institutions.” “[W]e are in the process of the second American Revolution,” he said, “which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Roberts was the man who organized Project 2025, the blueprint for a new kind of government dictated by a right-wing strongman. Creating that new government would require a president willing to act illegally, stripping the secular language of civil rights from public life, packing the government with loyalists, ending the social safety net, killing business regulations, and purging American institutions of all but right-wing ideologues.

When Americans learned about Project 2025, they hated it. An NBC News poll from September 2024 showed that only 4% of Americans saw the project favorably. Even among Republicans, that number climbed only to 7%. For those identifying as MAGA Republicans, the number rose to just 9%.

So Trump and his campaign advisors denied that he had anything to do with the plan. “I know nothing about Project 2025,” he wrote on social media in July. “I have no idea who is behind it.”

And yet six months into the second Trump administration, on the sixtieth anniversary of the law that symbolized the modern American state by establishing Medicare and Medicaid, it’s clear we are indeed in a revolution designed to destroy the government we have known in favor of the radical right-wing government envisioned by those who wrote Project 2025.

From the beginning, the administration declared war on the words that protected equal rights for all Americans, fired women and racial minorities from leadership positions, and attacked transgender Americans. It worked to replace civil servants with loyalists who embraced the tenets of Project 2025, putting people like former Fox News host Pete Hegseth at the head of government agencies. Yesterday Greg Jaffe and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times reported that in a break with past practices, Hegseth, now secretary of defense, is requiring nominees for four-star general positions in the U.S. military to meet personally with Trump.

It worked to dismantle the government by refusing to release the money Congress had appropriated to fund the existing government. Thanks to billionaire Elon Musk at the “Department of Government Efficiency” and Russell Vought—another author of Project 2025—at the Office of Management and Budget, the administration illegally impounded funds, slashing through funding for foreign aid, cancer research, veterans’ benefits, air traffic control staffing, and so on, claiming to be eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse.” That fight is ongoing.

But while it shrank government programs that helped ordinary people—programs like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)—as part of their claim to be returning power to the states, the administration did not shrink the government itself. Instead, it dramatically expanded the government’s capacity to arrest and detain undocumented migrants.

The administration set out to purge the country of what extremists claimed was “leftist” influence in law firms, media, and universities. It illegally blocked lawyers from law firms that represented Democrats from access to federal buildings, making it impossible for them to represent their clients. It sued media outlets for alleged bias, and it withheld congressionally appropriated funds for universities for alleged antisemitism.

Last week, in order to obtain the Federal Communications Commission's approval of an $8 billion merger between CBS parent company Paramount and Skydance Media, Skydance agreed not to set up programs related to civil rights, or “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and to produce “unbiased” journalism. Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr approved the merger, then bragged on right-wing media shows that CBS has agreed to put in place an internal political “bias monitor” who will report to the president of Paramount to make sure the channel’s news coverage is favorable to Trump and the right wing.

Last week, after Columbia University agreed to pay $221 million and to promise it will not use “race, color, sex, or national origin” in hiring decisions in exchange for the government’s restoring the $1.3 billion in funding the administration had withheld over charges of antisemitism, Trump’s education secretary Linda McMahon told Maria Bartiromo of the Fox (Fake❗) News Channel: “[T]his is a monumental victory for conservatives who’ve wanted to do things on these elite campuses for a long time because we had such far left leaning professors.”

On Monday the Office of Personnel Management issued a memo allowing federal employees to pray publicly at work, as well as to try to “persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views.”

The administration has worked to dismantle the regulations that protect Americans by using artificial intelligence to slash regulations in half by next January. With the blessing of the Supreme Court, Trump has claimed the power to fire the heads of independent agencies, effectively giving him power over agencies created by Congress.

Yesterday the administration took its fight against public protections a leap further when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a new rule that would get rid of a rule in place since 2009 establishing, on the basis of scientific evidence, that the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane warms the planet and thus endangers human life. Most of the vehicle, factory, and power plant emissions standards currently in place come from this “endangerment finding.”

EPA officials told Lisa Friedman of the New York Times they intend to argue that it is climate regulations, rather than greenhouse gas emissions, that cause the real harm to human health because they lead to higher prices and less consumer choice.

As Roberts said, the Supreme Court’s decision giving Trump immunity was important because destroying the country’s institutions would require lawbreaking. In nothing has that been so clear as in the administration’s handling of the rendering of undocumented migrants to third countries. Whistleblowers from the Department of Justice claim that DOJ official Emil Bove told DOJ attorneys they could ignore court orders stopping migrant flights, saying they should consider telling the courts “f*ck you.”

Last night, the Senate confirmed Bove to a federal judgeship, with 50 Republicans voting in favor. Forty-seven Democrats voted no. They were joined by Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who said: “I don’t think that somebody who has counseled other attorneys that you should ignore the law, you should reject the law, I don’t think that that individual should be placed in a lifetime seat on the bench.”

But Thom Tillis (R-NC) voted in favor of Bove’s confirmation, illustrating that even those Republicans who have put distance between themselves and Trump are enabling the revolution in our government.

Republicans in Congress have enabled the dismantling of the country’s social safety net with dramatic cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program while also extending significant tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and pouring money into purges of undocumented migrants. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told an audience at an event for the right-wing media outlet Breitbart that the new “Trump accounts” established by the budget reconciliation bill are “a backdoor for privatizing Social Security.”💢😧❗⚠️

Congress’s unwillingness to stand against Trump shows most dramatically in its reluctance to reassert the power the Constitution gives to it—and only to it—over tariffs. Trump has fought his tariff war only by asserting emergency power, but he has used that power to change world trade and to punish countries like Brazil for its prosecution of Trump’s political ally, former president Jair Bolsonaro. The day before the August 1 deadline, on which most of Trump’s tariffs will go into effect, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will weigh in on whether those tariffs are legal.

When Kevin Roberts announced a year ago that the radical right was launching a second American revolution, he was telling the truth.😱 ❗ But, the new world they want to bring to life seems no more popular now, than it was then.

And now the growing scandal around Donald J. Trump’s connections to late convicted sex predator Jeffrey Epstein shows that the MAGA movement is apparently willing to accept the sexual abuse of children in order to cement their worldview.

Trump tried to cast himself as a sort of protector when he claimed that he turned against Epstein because Epstein “stole people that worked for me.” When asked if those employees were young women, Trump answered “yes” and that they were hired “out of the spa” he ran. He said one of those girls was Virginia Giuffre, who was sex trafficked as a teenager by Ghislaine Maxwell and died by suicide earlier this year. Although Trump’s timeline did not add up—Guiffre left her job at Mar-a-Lago in 2000 and the friendship between the two men continued for several more years—the story itself suggests what’s on his mind. A reporter asked Trump about those girls: “What did you think Epstein was stealing those women for❓😥”

Today Dan Ruetenik of CBS News issued a detailed report about the video from outside Epstein’s jail cell that the DOJ has released as proof he died by suicide. A government source told Ruetenik that the released video is not raw footage—confirming a report by Dhruv Mehrotra of Wired on July 15—and that it is two videos stitched together. Ruetenik reported that the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and the DOJ inspector general all possess the longer video.

And perhaps there is also a story about Project 2025’s staying power in the fact that this damning report was dropped less than a week after Trump officials celebrated their control over CBS.—

Notes:
https://www.mediamatters.org/project-2025/heritage-foundation-president-celebrates-supreme-court-immunity-decision-we-are

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/poll-project-2025-broadly-known-severely-unpopular-voters-rcna172660

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/21/magazine/heritage-foundation-kevin-roberts.html

https://www.democracydocket.com/analysis/what-is-project-2025-and-why-is-it-alarming/

https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/03/us/politics/heritage-foundation-2025-policy-america.html

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/here-we-are-2

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/29/us/politics/generals-trump.html

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/28/trump-federal-employees-preach-faith-work-00480696

https://www.npr.org/2025/07/25/nx-s1-5479240/columbia-trump-administration-settlement-details

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/business/media/fcc-skydance-merger-paramount.html

https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/supreme-court-puts-humphreys-executor-on-death-bed/
The Epstein Crisis No One Controls
Guest article by Michael Cohen…
Read more
8 hours ago · 855 likes · 130 comments · Michael Cohen and MeidasTouch Network

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeffrey-epstein-jail-video-investigation/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/07/26/doge-ai-tool-cut-regulations-trump/

https://www.cms.gov/about-cms/who-we-are/history

Bluesky:
atrupar.com/post/3lupiv74kmm2n

thetnholler.bsky.social/post/3lv7afo2dzk2z

© 2025 Heather Cox Richardson
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
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Republicans are blinded by Christian Nationalism and "Seven Mountains" theocracy

Echo opinion published in the Milwaukee Indpendent by Heather Cox Richardson:

Dangerous Seven Mountains theocracy and right wing Christian Nationalism

The Alabama Supreme Court on February 16, (wrongfully😕😫😭) decided that cells awaiting implantation for in vitro fertilization are children and that the accidental destruction of such an embryo falls under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.

In an opinion concurring with the ruling, Chief Justice Tom Parker declared that the people of Alabama have adopted the “theologically based view of the sanctity of life” and said that “human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God.”

Payton Armstrong of media watchdog Media Matters for America reported that on the same day the Alabama decision came down, an interview Parker did on the program of a self-proclaimed “prophet” and Q-Anon conspiracy theorist appeared. In it, Parker claimed that “God created government” and called it “heartbreaking” that “we have let it go into the possession of others.”

Parker referred to the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” 😧a theory that appeared in 1975, which claims that Christians must take over the “seven mountains” of U.S. life: religion, family, education, media, entertainment, business … and government. 

Parker told his interviewer that “we’ve abandoned those Seven Mountains and they’ve been occupied by the other side.” God “is calling and equipping people to step back into these mountains right now,” he said.

While Republicans are split on the decision about embryos after a number of hospitals have ended their popular IVF programs out of fear of prosecution, others, like Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley agreed that “embryos, to me, are babies.”

House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) identifies himself as a Christian, has argued that the United States is a Christian nation, and has called for “biblically sanctioned government.” At a retreat of Republican leaders this weekend, as the country is grappling with both the need to support Ukraine and the need to fund the government, he tried to rally the attendees with what some called a “sermon” arguing that the Republican Party needed to save the country from its lack of morality.

As Charles Blow of the New York Times put it: “If you don’t think this country is sliding toward theocracy, you’re not paying attention.”

In the United States, theocracy and authoritarianism go hand in hand.

The framers of the Constitution quite deliberately excluded religion from the U.S. Constitution. As a young man, James Madison, the key thinker behind the Constitution, had seen his home state of Virginia arrest itinerant preachers for undermining the established church in the state. He came to believe that men had a right to the free exercise of religion.

In 1785, in a “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments,” he explained that what was at stake was not just religion, but also representative government itself. The establishment of one religion over others attacked a fundamental human right—an unalienable right—of conscience.

If lawmakers could destroy the right of freedom of conscience, they could destroy all other unalienable rights. Those in charge of government could throw representative government out the window and make themselves tyrants.

In order to make sure men had the right of conscience, the framers added the First Amendment to the Constitution. It read: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….”

Madison was right to link religion and representative government. In the early years of the nation, Americans zealously guarded the wall between the two. They strictly limited the power of the federal government to reflect religion, refusing even to permit the government to stop delivery of the U.S. mails on Sunday out of concern that Jews and Christians did not share the same Sabbath, and the government could not choose one over the other.

The Constitution, a congressional report noted, gave Congress no authority “to inquire and determine what part of time, or whether any has been set apart by the Almighty for religious exercises.”

But the Civil War marked a change. As early as the 1830s, southern white enslavers relied on religious justification for their hierarchical system that rested on white supremacy. God, they argued, had made Black Americans for enslavement and women for marriage, and society must recognize those facts.

A character in an 1836, novel written by a Virginia gentleman explained to a younger man that God had given everyone a place in society. Women and Black people were at the bottom, “subordinate” to white men by design. “All women live by marriage,” he said. “It is their only duty.” Trying to make them equal was a cruelty. “For my part,” the older man said, “I am well pleased with the established order of the universe. I see…subordination everywhere. And when I find the subordinate content…and recognizing his place…as that to which he properly belongs, I am content to leave him there.”

The Confederacy rejected the idea of popular government, maintaining instead that a few Americans should make the rules for the majority. As historian Gaines Foster explained in his 2002, book Moral Reconstruction, which explores the nineteenth-century relationship between government and morality, it was the Confederacy, not the U.S. government, that sought to align the state with God. A nation was more than the “aggregation of individuals,” one Presbyterian minister preached, it was “a sort of person before God,” and the government must purge that nation of sins.

Confederates not only invoked “the favor and guidance of Almighty God” in their Constitution, they established as their motto “Deo vindice,” or “God will vindicate.”

The United States, in contrast, was recentering democracy during the war, and it rejected the alignment of the federal government with a religious vision.

When reformers in the United States tried to change the preamble of the U.S. Constitution to read, “We, the people of the United States, humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the sources of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Ruler among nations, and His revealed will as of supreme authority, in order to constitute a Christian government, and in order to form a more perfect union,” the House Committee on the Judiciary concluded that “the Constitution of the United States does not recognize a Supreme Being.”

That defense of democracy — the will of the majority — continued to hold religious extremists at bay.

Reformers continued to try to add a Christian amendment to the Constitution, Foster explains, and in March 1896, once again got so far as the House Committee on the Judiciary. One reformer stressed that turning the Constitution into a Christian document  😮would provide a source of authority for the government that, he implied, it lacked when it simply relied on a voting majority. A religious amendment “asks the Bible to decide moral issues in political life; not all moral questions, but simply those that have become political questions.”

Opponents recognized this attempt as a revolutionary attack that would dissolve the separation of church and state, and hand power to a religious minority. One reformer said that Congress had no right to enact laws that were not in “harmony with the justice of God” and that the voice of the people should prevail only when it was “right.”

Congressmen then asked who would decide what was right, and what would happen if the majority was wrong. Would the Supreme Court turn into an interpreter of the Bible? The committee set the proposal aside.

Now, once again, we are watching a minority trying to impose its will on the majority, with leaders like House speaker Johnson noting that … “I try to do every day what my constituents want. But sometimes what your constituents want does not line up with the principles God gave us for government. And you have to have conviction enough to stand [up] to your own people.”

My echo question: Is "originalism" a legal parallel to the regressive idea of "creationism"?

Echo opinion published in The Atlantic magazine authored by Maine Senator Angus King and Heather Cox Richardson, professor of history at Boston College.

In Maine Writer opinion - "originalism" sounds to me like a legal parallel to "creationism".  IOW, both are regressive points of view.  Check the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette opinion*. 

Amy Coney Barrett’s Judicial Philosophy Doesn’t Hold Up to Scrutiny

The Constitution should be the sturdy vessel of our ideals and aspirations, not a derelict sailing ship locked in the ice of a world far from our own.

During her confirmation hearings, Amy Coney Barrett argued that the judicial philosophy known as “originalism” should guide judges in their interpretation and application of constitutional principles. Most famously associated with the late Justice Antonin Scalia (for whom Judge Barrett clerked), this idea sounds simple and sensible: In determining what the Constitution permits, a judge must first look to the plain meaning of the text, and if that isn’t clear, then apply what was in the minds of the 55 men who wrote it in 1787. Period. Anything else is “judicial lawmaking.”

In some cases, interpreting the Constitution with an originalist lens is pretty easy; for example, the Constitution says that the president must be at least 35 years old (“35” means, well, 35), that each state has two senators (not three and not one), and that Congress is authorized to establish and support an Army and a Navy. But wait a minute. What about the Air Force? Is it mentioned in the text? Nope. Is there any ambiguity in the text? Again, no. It doesn’t say “armed forces”; it explicitly says “Army” and “Navy.” Did the Framers have in mind the Air Force 115 years before the Wright brothers? Not likely.

So is the Air Force unconstitutional, even though it clearly fails both prongs of the “originalist” test? No, a more reasonable and obvious interpretation is that the Framers intended that the country be protected and that the Air Force is a logical extension of that concept, even though it wasn’t contemplated in 1787. This isn’t judicial lawmaking; it’s judges doing what they’re hired to do.

And these are the easy cases. How about terms like due process? What does due mean? Is a process that locks you up for life without access to a lawyer “due”? How about an “unreasonable” search and seizure? Is wiretapping “unreasonable”? (We wonder what the Framers thought about wiretapping or cyber theft.) Does “freedom of speech” apply to corporations, which didn’t exist in their modern form in 1787?

To put it bluntly, the whole premise of originalism is nonsense in that it pretends to make the work of the Supreme Court look straightforward and mechanical, like “calling balls and strikes,” in Justice John Roberts’s famous phase. But defining equal protection, due process, or unreasonable is not. We need a Supreme Court to interpret the intent and appropriate application of the terms of the Constitution to particular cases (many not dreamed of by the Framers).

Originalism is an intellectual cloak drummed up (somewhat recently) to dignify a profoundly retrogressive view of the Constitution as a straitjacket on the ability of the federal government to act on behalf of the public. Its real purpose is to justify a return to the legal environment of the early 1930s, when the Court routinely struck down essential elements of the New Deal. Business regulation, Social Security, and Medicare? Not so fast. The Affordable Care Act, environmental protections, a woman’s right to choose? Forget it. And this despite the Constitution’s preamble, which states that one of its basic purposes is to “promote the general welfare.”

This does not mean that the Court should be totally unmoored from the text of the Constitution or the intent of the Framers and act as an unchecked super-legislature (with lifetime tenure to boot). Clearly, this would be inconsistent with the underlying democratic idea that the American people should be the ultimate decision makers through regular elections and the actions of their elected representatives. The Court must interpret and apply the terms of the Constitution according to their plain meaning (where there is a plain meaning) and the understanding and intent of the Framers (where there was such a thing). But it also must recognize that our understanding of our principles and values has expanded over time, and it must interpret the law in the context of that growth.

The intellectual dishonesty of many originalists is exposed by their reluctance to follow their own logic regarding certain landmark cases, now widely recognized as milestones in our national progress toward “a more perfect union.” The easiest examples are Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia, the former concerning school integration, the latter, interracial marriage, illegal in Virginia until Loving in 1967. Both decisions explicitly fail the originalist test, yet Judge Barrett asserts they were correctly decided and endorses them as “super-precedents,” a convenient dodge that evades the troubling implications of her supposedly simple theory of constitutional interpretation.

The real problem with the originalist theory is that it allows no room for ethical, moral, or political growth. If the Framers didn’t think it, it’s not allowed.

Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence and paid close attention to the drafting of the Constitution from his official post in France, understood this danger explicitly: “I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions,” he wrote in an 1816 letter addressing what he perceived to be weaknesses in the new government, “but … laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”

The fact is that the Framers knew very well that they could not reliably look into thefuture and anticipate the changes that were to come—whether they be the necessity of an Air Force or the manifest unfairness of segregated schools—and therefore gave us a document that defines the structure of our government, but also accommodates advances in our understanding of the essential elements of human dignity.

The Constitution should be the sturdy vessel of our ideals and aspirations, not a derelict sailing ship locked in the ice of a world far from our own.

This story is part of the project “The Battle for the Constitution,” in partnership with the National Constitution Center.

*“originalist” culture that has lost much of its glitter. The originalist Constitution...was a document developed by an elite group of white male property owners who wanted to maintain their power and wealth. It excluded women and kept millions in slavery. To be ratified, this document had to contain electoral and legislative safeguards so that, in a more enlightened United States, these undemocratic institutions could not be reversed. Enlightenment did occur, but this culture was so ingrained that it took a crushing Civil War to end the enslavement of people of color. Robert Kraftowitz, Point Breeze, Pittsburgh, PA