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Letters from an American

Letters from an American

Heather Cox Richardson

A newsletter about the history behind today's politics.

  • 9 minutes 42 seconds
    Trump’s Frantic Pace

    September 7, 2026

    Trump has been posting on social media at a frantic pace, He is posting AI images of himself as a superhero, as various historic figures, as a mapmaker, and a stock trader.  He apparently believes that trolling the country is a good way to keep attention focused on himself rather than on inflation, corruption, or the war in Iran, Trump’s approval rating on the economy is 41 points under water,   Energy Secretary Chris Wright said we may never see a nuclear agreement with Iran, Trump claimed that oil prices are going to plummet, Trump appears to have abandoned the idea of governing and is operating as if he can do whatever he wishes, Trump’s Labor Day message was vastly different from Joe Biden’s message for the country which recognized the role of every worker in making the country run. 

    Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-

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    8 September 2026, 6:14 pm
  • 12 minutes 12 seconds
    In a Nutshell

    September 5, 2026

    The Trump administration had a busy Friday, US District Judge Talwani blocked Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional plan to use the US Postal Service to screen mail-in voters, A day after Interior Secretary Burgum announced that work was starting on Trump’s arch, US District Court Judge Chutkan ordered the administration to give the court notice before proceeding, Trump said the Iran War is not a war, and denied that military personnel are seeing record long deployments, and that the US controls the Strait of Hormuz, Trump also denies reports of a shortage of munitions, and Pete Hegseth is forcing members of the military’s Joint Staff to take lie detector tests to prove they were not source of leaks, The Defense Department and NIH are moving funds for medical research to the Pentagon, where the Navy has run out of money, Trump appears to misunderstand how trade and trade deficits work, And the US was the only country to vote against a UN resolution to change the world map to more accurately reflect the size of continents, more than 450 years after the commonly used Mercator projection was created.

    Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-

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    6 September 2026, 7:15 pm
  • 7 minutes 24 seconds
    Labor Day

    September 4, 2026

    On September 5, 1882, workers in New York City celebrated the first Labor Day holiday, Their goal was to emphasize the importance of workers in the industrializing economy, Twenty years after the Civil War, government had swung toward men of capital, and working men worried they would lose their rights, Inequality was growing in the country, Workers helped elect reformer Democrat Grover Cleveland to the White House in 1884, In 1888 Cleveland won the popular vote but lost in the electoral college to Benjamin Harrison, In 1892 Cleveland was re-elected in a landslide, Investors rushed to take their money out of the stock market and the economy collapsed.  Cleveland and the Democratic Congress had to abandon many of their pro-worker policies, But on June 28, 1894, Cleveland signed Congress’s bill making Labor Day a legal holiday. 

    Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-

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    5 September 2026, 9:44 pm
  • 9 minutes 31 seconds
    What Will the Midterms Bring?

    September 3, 2026

    Election analyst Charlie Cook is warning Republicans to brace themselves for the midterms, The Trump administration is trying to implement a new gatekeeper role for the US Postal Service, violating the Constitution which gives control of elections to the states, The court that blocked the USPS plan until September 10 held a hearing about extending that block, Solicitor General John Sauer went directly to the Supreme Court to appeal, The Speaker of the House canceled votes for the last two weeks of September, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced that work on Trump’s arch will begin, even though approvals have not been secured, The approaching midterms are affecting decisions about Iran and the Epstein Files.

    Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-

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    4 September 2026, 7:34 pm
  • 11 minutes 7 seconds
    Nothing You Can Do Can Stop Us

    September 2, 2026

    Some pundits interpreted Trump’s 2024 win as a permanent political realignment, Others disagreed, seeing the swing toward Trump as due to anti-incumbent feelings, Republicans set out to redistrict states to guarantee control of Congress after the 2026 midterm election, The redistricting may have backfired, Anti-incumbent feeling has turned against the Republicans, In January voters flipped a seat in the Texas Senate from Republican to Democratic in a historically Republican dominated district in Tarrant County, Now Republicans are panicking, Trump is talking about nationalizing voting, rigging the election, sending armed officers to the polls, but every effort has been blocked by the courts or failed in Congress, Courts blocked Trump’s attempt to use the USPS as a gatekeeper to stop ballots from being delivered to voters, but the plan has continued in spite of the court order, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is not ruling out sending ICE agents to the polls although federal law prohibits it, In Tarrant County Texas the Republicans are cutting the number of polling places, in spite of voter outrage. 

    Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-

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    3 September 2026, 8:30 pm
  • 10 minutes 7 seconds
    A Betrayal of Our Constitution

    September 1, 2026

    The US Supreme Court allowed Trump to continue to build his ballroom, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the project is likely unlawful, but the project will likely be completed before that question is resolved, Trump’s behavior is a logical outcome of the theory of the “unitary executive,” In 2024, the Supreme Court overturned the commitment to the idea that no one is above the law, Trump is convinced that he can do whatever he wishes, including rigging elections so that he cannot lose, The US Postal Service is putting in place a new system for handling federal election ballot mail, in a hasty, chaotic, and flawed process, A whistleblower says that the administration has hidden the likelihood that there will be major disruptions in getting ballots delivered to voters, Work on this system has continued despite an injunction from a federal court ordering it to stop, The USPS has never played a gatekeeping function and Sen Richard Blumenthal called on the Postmaster General to abandon the plan and ensure that all Americans can vote without interference by the USPS, He told reporters that it appears the system is designed to disenfranchise millions of Americans, And Trump seems largely unaware of what is going on in his administration.

    Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-

    Get full, free access to Letters from an American here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

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    2 September 2026, 9:39 pm
  • 10 minutes 24 seconds
    Military Leadership is Concerned

    August 31, 2026

    Military leaders are warning Defense Secretary Hegseth that continuing large scale operations in Iran is unsustainable and dangerous, Trump’s insistence on having the option to launch major attacks has forced more than 50,000 troops to be kept on alert for months,  The chief of Naval Operations has warned that the Navy cannot sustain its current level of support for the Iran war, The Pentagon has pushed back, and Hegseth has fired several admirals and generals who he deems insufficiently loyal,, After a reported exchange of fire in Iran, Trump claimed on social media that Iran is failing, though the image he posted doesn’t reflect reality, Hegseth is attempting to silence journalists. The staffers he fired at Stars and Stripes are suing Hegseth, and the Defense Department, calling the firings a violation of the First Amendment, Hegseth is also hiring right-wing social media influencers using taxpayer money, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll submitted his resignation on Monday, after struggling with Hegseth for months over the firing of senior Army officers and the direction of the military.

    Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-

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    1 September 2026, 9:43 pm
  • 12 minutes 31 seconds
    Truth Telling

    August 30, 2026

    In America's founding myth about George Washington and the cherry tree, the message was that truth telling is important in a leader, Trump’s administration was supposed to notify US District Court Judge Reyes before taking down trees on the grounds of the East Potomac Golf Links, a historic publicly owned course, But more than 60 trees have been removed and the administration has not abided by her ruling, They claim the trees had to be removed for maintenance purposes, Trump is hailing an oil deal with Venezuela, although there is little information about it, It appears to involve the family of Alejandro Betancourt López, who has been accused of corruption and investigated for money laundering, The deal is built on a legal environment that does not exist, The deal is also built on US aggression, the kidnapping of President Maduro, the installation of Maduro’s vice president instead of the opposition candidate, As journalist David Rothkopf pointedly explained, we do not know where the money is going, and whether it will end up being a “mafia-style shakedown scheme” benefitting anti democratic forces in Venezuela and the US, and the president’s friends, and possibly the president’s family, and himself.

    Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-

    Get full, free access to Letters from an American here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

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    31 August 2026, 9:09 pm
  • 10 minutes 48 seconds
    The Right to Run for Office

    August 29, 2026

    Republican lawmakers are attempting to restrict the ability of naturalized and dual citizens to run for office, At least five Republican members of Congress want to prohibit them from holding federal judgeships, Cabinet posts, and ambassadorships as well, Americans have struggled over questions of equality and immigration for more than a century, Anti-immigrant sentiment on the East Coast over Irish immigrants and on the West Coast over Chinese immigrants led to limits to their rights and created a caste system, Abraham Lincoln understood that giving up the principle of equality is an excuse for enslaving people and that we cannot make exceptions to the Declaration of Independence, Americans added the 14th Amendment to the Constitution to ensure that these exceptions could not be made, The Constitution's requirements for officeholders are the only allowable qualifications, neither states nor the federal government can add additional qualifications, The idea of discriminating against naturalized citizens is, in the words of law professor Pamela Karlan, "ugly, stupid, and unconstitutional."

    Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-

    Get full, free access to Letters from an American here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

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    30 August 2026, 8:09 pm
  • 12 minutes 22 seconds
    The Need to Defend the Vote

    August 28, 2026

    On August 28, 1963, Reverend Dr Martin Luther King spoke at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, His speech was about race, but also about economics, John Lewis also spoke, calling for peaceful demonstrations and the vote, In 1964, voters gave Democrats a strong majority in Congress and, with President Lyndon B. Johnson, were able to pass 84 new laws putting Johnson’s Great Society in Place, The laws cemented civil rights, created jobs, provided aid for job training and education, created Medicare and Medicaid, protected consumers and the environment, and provided support for the arts and the humanities, With the election of Richard Nixon the race to tear apart this commitment by appealing to racism was on, And in 2026 the Trump administration is abandoning Temporary Protected Status for Haitians who came to the US because it was too dangerous for them at home, Meanwhile vast sums are being contributed to keeping Republicans in office as they funnel money upward and dismantle the government, Republican candidates are calling for ICE and retired police to be deployed to intimidate voters in the midterms.

    Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-

    Get full, free access to Letters from an American here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

    You can also find me:

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    29 August 2026, 6:58 pm
  • 16 minutes 5 seconds
    The Stench of Corruption

    August 27, 2026

    RFK appears to have lied about the purpose of his Samoa trip, Information on his testimony and conduct could lead to hearings, and could prove embarrassing to the Trump administration, The war on Iran has created a financial crisis that is affecting the Navy, There is speculation that the shortages are a deliberate and political decision, The administration’s latest move, to cancel an offshore wind project, is funneling a fortune to a donor to Trump’s inaugural committee, The deal and others like it are corrupt and illegal, The Trump family’s crypto ventures are funded by foreign governments and others seeking favor, Trump’s crypto schemes are leaving investors under water, Trump’s approval ratings continue to fall, Trump is trying to make the midterm elections all about him, Perhaps to bully Canada, Trump is directing Interior Secretary Burgum to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in official documents. 

    Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-

    Get full, free access to Letters from an American here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

    You can also find me:

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    Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe
    28 August 2026, 9:39 pm
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