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Glad to share! And I hope it’s helped to spread the word about her “letters” (and her other work).
When I first started reading these letters on FBOOK I was amazed at her clarity, her ability to pin down key facts and issues amidst political chaos, AND to do so while providing relevant historical context. Funny how I’ve kind of gotten used to that, and have come to expect it. Sometimes, though, a letter of hers does still make me sit back in awe and gratitude.
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I too appreciate you reposting these here. I don’t use FB for my mental health and your efforts made the Letters to America accessible to me
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September 15, 2024 (Sunday)
I was all set to write today when I opened my cartoonist friend Liza Donnelly’s Seeing Things newsletter. It had a cartoon of a doctor ordering her patient: “Do not, I repeat, DO NOT, talk politics for twenty-four hours.”
Today has been as busy in the news as all the days lately seem to be, but I figured Liza was right that we need a break. Buddy and I spent the day like this turtle, taking it easy and enjoying the warmth of the summer’s end.
I’ll be back at it tomorrow.
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September 16, 2024 (Monday)
In the week since Trump’s disastrous debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, MAGA Republicans appear to be melting down. As Republicans commandeer the disaster news, the Democratic presidential nominee appears to be trying to stay out of their way. Harris sat for an interview with media host Stephanie Himonidis Sedano, known as “Chiquibaby,” of the Spanish-language U.S. audio Nueva Network, an interview that will air tomorrow on more than 100 radio stations.
For the third day in a row, officials today had to evacuate two elementary schools in Springfield, Ohio, citing threats that have led to safety concerns. The city has also canceled “CultureFest,” its annual celebration of diversity, arts, and culture, and the local colleges are meeting virtually out of safety concerns. The Bureau of Motor Vehicles has had to close, as has the Ohio License Bureau.
Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, said that there have been “at least 33” bomb threats against schools and public offices after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, spread the lie that Haitian immigrants to Springfield have been eating the pets of their white neighbors. DeWine reiterated that the immigrants in Springfield are there legally, and noted that he has authorized troopers from the Ohio State Highway Patrol to provide additional security at the district’s 18 school buildings.
On CNN yesterday morning, Vance admitted to Dana Bash that he had created the story of Haitian immigrants eating pets. He justified the lie that has shut down Springfield and endangered its residents by claiming such a lie was the only way to get the media to pay attention to what he considers the crisis of immigration. Once the pet-eating story was debunked, Vance said that Haitian immigrants are spreading HIV and tuberculosis in Ohio; in fact, new diagnoses of HIV dropped from 2018 to 2022, and the director of the Ohio Department of Health says there has been no change in TB rates.
That a politician of any sort would lie to rally supporters against a marginalized population comes straight out of the authoritarian playbook, which seeks to build a community around the idea that the people in it are besieged by outsiders. But when that politician is running for vice president, with the potential to become the president if anything happens to his 78-year-old running mate, who is the oldest person ever to run for president, it raises a whole factory of red flags.
Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times noted the support of racist ideologue Alfred Rosenberg of the Nazi Party for the antisemitic text “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a text fabricated in the early twentieth century by officials in czarist Russia. Rosenberg stood by the “inner truth” of the text even though it was fake. Like Rosenberg, Hitler’s chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels wrote, “I believe in the inner, but not the factual, truth of The Protocols.” While Democratic Ohio representative Casey Weinstein has called for Vance to resign, aside from DeWine, Republican lawmakers have not repudiated Vance’s lie.
Astonishingly, Vance is trying to rise to power on lies about the people of his own state, the people he is supposed to represent. Not only have Democratic politicians demanded that he stop, but also amidst the chaos, the Republican mayor of Springfield and two Republican county commissioners would not commit to voting for Trump. The popular backlash against this lie has also been swift and strong. The Ohio-based Red, Wine, and Blue organization has organized the #OHNoYouDont campaign to reiterate on social media their stance against the division Vance and Trump are stoking.
Trump seemed to try to regain control of the political narrative on Sunday by posting on social media, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,” a comment that looked like an attempt to change the subject from the backlash to the pet-eating lie, the continuing disparagement of Trump’s debate performance, and increasing attention to Trump’s attachment to right-wing provocateur and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer.
In the days since Trump took Loomer to a commemoration of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001—which she has suggested were an “inside job”—the media has paid more attention to the 31-year-old extremist who has been Trump’s close companion since Spring 2023. Loomer has cheered the drowning of 2,000 migrants and called for “2,000 more.” In June she said that Democrats should not just be prosecuted and jailed, but “they should get the death penalty. You know, we actually used to have the punishment for treason in this country.”
When some commenters suggested her relationship with Trump was sexual, she countered with a truly vile statement about Vice President Kamala Harris. The increasing visibility of Loomer near Trump has made those Republicans trying to run a more traditional campaign beg him to cut her loose, but Trump seems reluctant to distance himself from her. Sam Stein of The Bulwark today wrote that those Republicans worried about Trump being surrounded by conspiracy theorists are a decade late. After listing Trump’s many years of conspiracy theories, Stein wrote, they’re not “worried that Loomer will turn Trump into a raving lunatic. They’re simply worried that Trump might lose.”
As Trump seems increasingly detached from reality, Vance has become the face of the Republican presidential campaign. He seems desperate to turn the media cycle from Trump and the extraordinary unpopularity of the plans outlined in Project 2025 and toward immigration. It’s a hard sell, since voters correctly note that it was Republicans, egged on by Trump, who killed the strong bipartisan border bill in the spring. On Thursday, September 12, Vance said on CNBC that if immigration were the path to prosperity, “America would be the most prosperous country in the world.”
Outside of the hellscape in MAGA Republicans’ mind, it is. The Federal Reserve recently noted that as of the second quarter of 2024, U.S. household net worth is growing by a strong 7.1% a year. The stock market is also strong, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising 228 points today to set an all-time high.
On Sunday afternoon, shortly after Trump’s Taylor Swift post and another calling the “failing” New York Times a threat to democracy, as Trump was golfing at his club in West Palm Beach, Florida, Secret Service agents noticed and fired on a man holding a rifle with a scope. Today, Carol Leonnig, Josh Dawsey, and Isaac Stanley-Becker of the Washington Post reported that authorities have warned Trump of the risks of golfing at his own courses because of their proximity to public roads, but Trump insisted they were safe and kept using them.
The acting director of the Secret Service, Ronald Rowe Jr., said today that Trump’s plan for golfing on Sunday was unscheduled, so the secret service used an emergency plan for protecting Trump. Rowe said the suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, a convicted felon with a history of apparent mental illness, did not have a line of sight to the former president and did not shoot. He escaped and was later caught. Cell phone records suggest he was in the vicinity for 12 hours before being flushed out of the bushes.
Democratic leaders again denounced violence and said it has no place in our country. Observers noted that it was Trump who signed a bill revoking gun-checks for people with mental illnesses put in place by President Barack Obama and that he promised the National Rifle Association (NRA) that he would roll back all the gun safety provisions President Joe Biden has put in place if he wins in 2024. But the Trump campaign called for donations on a website suggesting, as MAGA Republicans did after the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, that Democrats were complicit in the threat to Trump. “There are people in this world who will do whatever it takes to stop us,” Trump’s campaign said.
Unfortunately, two attempts on a president’s life in such short order are not unprecedented. As Tom Nichols pointed out today in The Atlantic, Gerald Ford survived two attempts in 15 days in 1975. But, as Nichols also points out, Ford did not fundraise off the attempts or blame his opponents for them.
Opponents are pointing out that it is Trump and the MAGA Republicans, not the Democrats, who are stoking violence. Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel noted that in July 2023 Trump posted an address for former president Barack Obama on his social media network, prompting a stalker, and that in four different jurisdictions, Trump’s lawyers have argued that the First Amendment protects Trump’s right to attack the judges, prosecutors, and witnesses in the cases against him, as well as their families. Other’s recalled MAGA’s “jokes” about the brutal attack on then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul.
Trump supporter Elon Musk, who owns the social media platform X, wrote, “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,” a post he later called a “joke” after observers asked about the national security implications of a defense contractor who has $15 billion in federal contracts suggesting the assassination of the president and vice president. Musk’s post had more than 39 million impressions before he deleted it.
After his own incendiary post, Musk wrote: “The incitement to hatred and violence against President Trump by the media and leading Democrats needs to stop.” Conservative lawyer George Conway retorted: “What utter nonsense.”
Indeed, the MAGA attempt to tie the shootings near Trump to the Democrats is pretty clearly an attempt to stop Democrats from talking about the issues of the campaign by claiming that any public discussion of Trump’s own unpopular policies and hateful words will gin up violence against him.
One of the biggest issues MAGA Republicans would like to stop people from talking about is abortion. Reproductive healthcare journalist Kavitha Surana explained in ProPublica today that every state has a committee of experts that meet to examine women’s deaths during or within a year of pregnancy. Those committees operate with a two-year lag, meaning that we are now learning about women dying after the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized the constitutional right to abortion.
Georgia’s state committee has recently concluded that at least two women have died in Georgia from preventable causes after hospitals in the state denied them timely reproductive healthcare.
Amber Nicole Thurman died just weeks after the Georgia abortion ban went into effect. She went into sepsis from unexpelled fetal tissue after an abortion she obtained legally in North Carolina. Georgia’s law made the routine dilation and curettage procedure, or D&C, a felony with vague exceptions that make doctors worry about prosecution if they perform it. Reports show that doctors repeatedly discussed a D&C for Thurman but put it off even as her organs began to fail. By the time they performed the procedure, it was too late.
Surana notes that Georgia governor Brian Kemp said he was “overjoyed” when the law went into effect, and that it would keep women “safe, healthy, and informed.” Attorneys for the state of Georgia accused abortion rights activists who said the law endangered women of “hyperbolic fear mongering” just two weeks before Thurman died.
She left behind a 6-year-old son.
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September 17, 2024 (Tuesday)
In 1761, 55-year-old Benjamin Franklin attended the coronation of King George III and later wrote that he expected the young monarch’s reign would “be happy and truly glorious.” Fifteen years later, in 1776, he helped to draft and then signed the Declaration of Independence. An 81-year-old man in 1787, he urged his colleagues at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to rally behind the new plan of government they had written.
“I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them,” he said, “For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.”
The framers of the new constitution hoped it would fix the problems of the first attempt to create a new nation. During the Revolutionary War, the Second Continental Congress had hammered out a plan for a confederation of states, but with fears of government tyranny still uppermost in lawmakers’ minds, they centered power in the states rather than in a national government.
The result—the Articles of Confederation—was a “firm league of friendship” among the 13 new states, overseen by a congress of men chosen by the state legislatures and in which each state had one vote. The new pact gave the federal government few duties and even fewer ways to meet them. Indicating their inclinations, in the first substantive paragraph the authors of the agreement said: “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”
Within a decade, the states were refusing to contribute money to the new government and were starting to contemplate their own trade agreements with other countries. An economic recession in 1786 threatened farmers in western Massachusetts with the loss of their farms when the state government in the eastern part of the state refused relief; in turn, when farmers led by Revolutionary War captain Daniel Shays marched on Boston, propertied men were so terrified their own property would be seized that they raised their own army for protection.
The new system clearly could not protect property of either the poor or the rich and thus faced the threat of landless mobs. The nation seemed on the verge of tearing itself apart, and the new Americans were all too aware that both England and Spain were standing by, waiting to make the most of the opportunities such chaos would create.
And so, in 1786, leaders called for a reworking of the new government centered not on the states, but on the people of the nation represented by a national government. The document began, “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union….”
The Constitution established a representative democracy, a republic, in which three branches of government would balance each other to prevent the rise of a tyrant. Congress would write all “necessary and proper” laws, levy taxes, borrow money, pay the nation’s debts, establish a postal service, establish courts, declare war, support an army and navy, organize and call forth “the militia to execute the Laws of the Union” and “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.”
The president would execute the laws, but if Congress overstepped, the president could veto proposed legislation. In turn, Congress could override a presidential veto. Congress could declare war, but the president was the commander in chief of the army and had the power to make treaties with foreign powers. It was all quite an elegant system of paths and tripwires, really.
A judicial branch would settle disputes between inhabitants of the different states and guarantee every defendant a right to a jury trial.
In this system, the new national government was uppermost. The Constitution provided that “[t]he Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States,” and promised that “the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion….”
Finally, it declared: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”
“I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such,” Franklin said after a weary four months spent hashing it out, “because I think a general Government necessary for us,” and, he said, it “astonishes me…to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our…States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats.”
“On the whole,” he said to his colleagues, “I can not help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility—and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.”
On September 17, 1787, they did.
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September 18, 2024 (Wednesday)
Today, at a White House reception in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, President Joe Biden said: “We don’t demonize immigrants. We don’t single them out for attacks. We don’t believe they’re poisoning the blood of the country. We’re a nation of immigrants, and that’s why we’re so damn strong.”
Biden’s celebration of the country’s heritage might have doubled as a celebration of the success of his approach to piloting the economy out of the ravages of the pandemic. Today the Fed cut interest rates a half a point, a dramatic cut indicating that it considers inflation to be under control. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has maintained that it would be possible to slow inflation without causing a recession—a so-called soft landing—and she appears to have been vindicated.
Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell said: “The labor market is in solid condition, and our intention with our policy move today is to keep it there. You can say that about the whole economy: The US economy is in good shape. It’s growing at a solid pace, inflation is coming down. The labor market is at a strong pace. We want to keep it there. That’s what we’re doing.”
Powell, whom Trump first appointed to his position, said, “We do our work to serve all Americans. We’re not serving any politician, any political figure, any cause, any issue, nothing. It’s just maximum employment and price stability on behalf of all Americans.”
Powell was anticipating accusations from Trump that his cutting of rates was an attempt to benefit Harris before the election. Indeed, Jeff Stein of the Washington Post reported that Trump advisor Steven Moore called the move “jaw-dropping. There’s no reason they couldn’t do 25 now and 25 right after the election. Why not wait till then?” Moore added, "I’m not saying [the] reduction isn’t justified—it may well be and they have more data than I do. But i just think, 'why now?’” Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville called the cut “shamelessly political.”
The New Yorker’s Philip Gourevitch noted that “Trump has been begging officials worldwide not to do the right thing for years to help rig the election for him—no deal in Gaza, no defense of Ukraine, no Kremlin hostages release, no border deal, no continuing resolution, no interest rate cuts etc—just sabotage & subterfuge.”
That impulse to focus on regaining power rather than serving the country was at least part of what was behind Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s lie about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. That story has gotten even darker as it turns out Vance and Trump received definitive assurances on September 9 that the rumor was false, but Trump ran with it in the presidential debate of September 10 anyway. Now, although it has been made very clear—including by Republican Ohio governor Mike DeWine—that the Haitian immigrants in Springfield are there legally, Vance told a reporter today that he personally considers the programs under which they came illegal, so he is still “going to call [a Haitian migrant] an illegal alien.”
The lies about those immigrants have so derailed the Springfield community with bomb threats and public safety concerns that when the Trump campaign suggested Trump was planning a visit there, the city’s Republican mayor, Rob Rue, backed by DeWine, threw cold water on the idea. “It would be an extreme strain on our resources. So it’d be fine with me if they decided not to make that visit,” Rue said. Nonetheless, tonight, Trump told a crowd in Long Island, New York, that he will go to Springfield within the next two weeks.
The false allegation against Haitian immigrants has sparked outrage, but it has accomplished one thing for the campaign, anyway: it has gotten Trump at least to speak about immigration—which was the issue they planned to campaign on—rather than Hannibal Lecter, electric boats, and sharks, although he continues to insist that “everyone is agreeing that I won the Debate with Kamala.” Trump, Vance, and Republican lawmakers are now talking more about policies.
In the presidential debate of September 10, Trump admitted that after nine years of promising he would release a new and better healthcare plan than the Affordable Care Act in just a few weeks, all he really had were “concepts of a plan.” Vance has begun to explain to audiences that he intends to separate people into different insurance pools according to their health conditions and risk levels. That business model meant that insurers could refuse to insure people with pre-existing conditions, and overturning it was a key driver of the ACA.
Senate and House Republicans told Peter Sullivan of Axios that if they regain control of the government, they will work to get rid of the provision in the Inflation Reduction Act that permits the government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices. Negotiations on the first ten drugs, completed in August, will lower the cost of those drugs enough to save taxpayers $6 billion a year, while those enrolled in Medicare will save $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket expenses.
Yesterday Trump promised New Yorkers that he would restore the state and local tax deduction (SALT) that he himself capped at $10,000 in his 2017 tax cuts. In part, the cap was designed to punish Democratic states that had high taxes and higher government services, but now he wants to appeal to voters in those same states. On CNBC, host Joe Kernan pointed out that this would blow up the deficit, but House speaker Mike Johnson said that the party would nonetheless consider such a measure because it would continue to stand behind less regulation and lower taxes.
In a conversation with Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his former press secretary, Trump delivered another stream of consciousness commentary in which he appeared to suggest that he would lower food prices by cutting imports. Economics professor Justin Wolfers noted: “I’m exhausted even saying it, but blocking supply won’t reduce prices, and it’s not even close.” Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark added, “Tell me more about why you have to vote for Trump because of his ‘policies.’”
Trump has said he supports in vitro fertilization, or IVF, as have a number of Republican lawmakers, but today, 44 Republican senators once again blocked the Senate from passing a measure protecting it. The procedure is in danger from state laws establishing “fetal personhood,” which give a fertilized egg all the rights of a human being as established by the Fourteenth Amendment. That concept is in the 2024 Republican Party platform.
Trump has also demanded that Republicans in Congress shut down the government unless a continuing resolution to fund the government contains the so-called SAVE Act requiring people to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Speaker Johnson continues to suggest that undocumented immigrants vote in elections, but it is illegal for even documented noncitizens to do so, and Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the nonprofit American Immigration Council notes that even the right-wing Heritage Foundation has found only 12 cases of such illegal voting in the past 40 years.
Johnson brought the continuing resolution bill with the SAVE Act up for a vote today. It failed by a vote of 202 to 220. If the House and then the Senate don’t pass a funding bill, the government will shut down on October 1.
Republican endorsements of the Harris-Walz ticket continue to pile up. On Monday, six-term representative Bob Inglis (R-SC) told the Charleston City Paper that “Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to the republic” and said he would vote for Harris. “If Donald Trump loses, that would be a good thing for the Republican Party,” Inglis said. “Because then we could have a Republican rethink and get a correction.”
George W. Bush’s attorney general Alberto Gonzales, conservative columnist George Will, more than 230 former officials for presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, and 17 former staff members for Ronald Reagan have all recently added their names to the list of those supporting Harris. Today more than 100 Republican former members of Congress and national security officials who served in Republican administrations endorsed Harris, saying they “firmly oppose the election of Donald Trump.” They cited his chaotic governance, his praising of enemies and undermining allies, his politicizing the military and disparaging veterans, his susceptibility to manipulation by Russian president Vladimir Putin, and his attempt to overthrow democracy. They praised Harris for her consistent championing of “the rule of law, democracy, and our constitutional principles.”
Yesterday, singer-songwriters Billie Eilish, who has 119 million followers on Instagram, and Finneas, who has 4.2 million, asked people to register and to vote for Harris and Walz. “Vote like your life depends on it,” Eilish said, “because it does.”
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