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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – September 14, 2025

At 10:22 on the morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, a bomb ripped through the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. It was Youth Day in the historic brick church, and five young girls dressed in their Sunday best were in the ladies’ lounge getting ready for their part in the Sunday service that was about to start. As Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins were chatting and adjusting their dresses, a charge of dynamite stashed under the steps that led to the church sanctuary blasted into the ladies’ lounge. It killed the four girls instantly. Standing at the sink in the back of the room, Addie’s sister Sarah survived with serious injuries.
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For white supremacists in Birmingham, the children and the 16th Street Baptist Church where they had organized were the symbols of the movement that had beaten them.
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Al Jazeera: Venezuela condemns US destroyer for hostile occupation of fishing vessel

US military action against a Venezuelan boat sparks condemnation and troop deployments

Venezuela has accused the United States of illegally boarding and occupying one of its fishing vessels in the country’s special economic zone, further escalating tensions between Caracas and Washington.

In a statement on Saturday, Venezuela’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the vessel, carrying nine “humble” and “harmless” fishermen, was intercepted by the US destroyer USS Jason Dunham (DDG-109) on Friday.
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Bill McKibben: A Tale of Two Countries

Two superpowers, one behaving pathetically
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China first. Remarkable new details emerged yesterday of a trend we’ve been talking about for years in this newsletter: the rapid spread of clean energy and its associated appliances not only in China but in all the countries increasingly in their sphere. The folks at the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab at Johns Hopkins published a huge new study detailing the “rapid scale- up of overseas Chinese clean-tech manufacturing investments.”

Investment volume: Chinese firms have pledged at least USD 227 billion across green manufacturing projects. A high-end estimate approaches USD 250 billion. This surge of overseas green manufacturing investment is unprecedented; it now surpasses the USD 200 billion (in current 2024 dollars) invested by the US over four years of the Marshall Plan, at a time of similar American dominance of manufacturing in key industries.

I want you to go back and reread the last sentence of that paragraph—bigger, in real dollar terms, than the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan, of course, was what America spent to rebuilt the world in the wake of World War II, and it was a key driver of what became the most prosperous economy the world has ever seen. The American century was built in no small part on making sure that our allies (and enemies) in the Second World War recovered and were fitted into our trading system. Now the Chinese are doing the same thing, except somewhat bigger and faster. …
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Sarah Jones: Male Shooter of Two Teenagers Was ‘Radicalized by Some Network’

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Holly allegedly murdered two teenagers because was radicalized by extremism. The details of which kind of extremism have not yet been identified, but when we combine any kind of extremism with easy access to guns, we get gun violence.
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It’s unfortunate that school shootings are so frequent in our country that they no longer get a lot of news coverage. They are not held up as shocking tragedies that we can and must speak up about, but rather as inevitable events that we must harden ourselves to, as if we have all agreed that the deaths of school children to guns are a price we are willing to pay.
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BBC: Trump faces major headache with incidents in Qatar and Poland

Into the two big foreign policy arenas sucking up much of the Trump administration’s time and effort come two major challenges in less than 24 hours.

Israel’s air raid on the offices of Hamas in Doha and a Russian drone incursion deep into Polish airspace represent two massive headaches for the White House.

And, arguably, two major affronts to the president’s authority.

After all, these are conflicts – Ukraine and Gaza – US President Donald Trump said he would deal with swiftly and decisively.

In each case, a leader he sees as a natural, if problematic ally – Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – has thrown a massive spanner in the wheels of White House peace-making.
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Wired: US Taxpayers Will Pay Billions in New Fossil Fuel Subsidies Thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill

The Trump administration has already added nearly $40 billion in new federal subsidies for oil, gas, and coal in 2025, a report released Tuesday finds, sending an additional $4 billion out the door each year for fossil fuels over the next decade. That new amount, created with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act this summer, adds to $30.8 billion a year in preexisting subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. The report finds that the amount of public money the US will now spend on domestic fossil fuels stands at least $34.8 billion a year.
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2024 Derek Hunter: Kamala’s newest lie: Trump will send the army after you

… So now we have another lie: the “enemy within” lie. This is a 33-second clip of an interview Trump did with Maria Bartiromo. It started circulating Monday in left-wing circles with the claim that, were he reelected, he would consider using the military against his political opponents.
(2024 Derek Hunter more…)

Bulwark: Understanding Trump’s Pivot to “Crime”

Where does Kamala Harris go to get her apology?

NY Times: Trump Says Having ‘a Little Fight With the Wife’ Should Not Count as a Crime

President Trump said that offenses that happen at home should not undermine his record of crime reduction in Washington.
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“Just a casual dismissal of domestic violence as a crime,” Sarah Longwell, a longtime Republican political strategist, wrote on social media.

Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – September 8, 2025

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The administration appears to be in a rush to replace democracy with a dictatorship before the whole administration collapses. On Saturday, Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers reported that 46% of Americans—almost half of them—“strongly disapprove” of the job Trump is doing as president while only 24% “strongly approve, a 22% enthusiasm gap.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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NY Times: Russia Steps Up Disinformation Efforts as Trump Abandons Resistance

The Kremlin has begun a campaign to sway the parliamentary election in Moldova in what could become a new model of election interference online.

Since returning to the White House in January, President Trump has dismantled the American government’s efforts to combat foreign disinformation. The problem is that Russia has not stopped spreading it.

How much that matters can now be seen in Moldova, a small but strategic European nation that has since the end of the Cold War looked to Europe and the United States to extract itself from Moscow’s shadow.
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Atlantic: A Massive Vaccine Experiment

In just seven months, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has undone decades of vaccine synchrony.
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The consequences of the current fracturing may not be apparent right away. Immunity takes time to erode. “If we stop vaccinating today, we would not have outbreaks tomorrow,” Orenstein said. When the fallout lands, Kennedy could be long out of the government, and limiting the damage he’s done will be someone else’s problem.
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WSJ: Hiring Stalled in August, With 22,000 New Jobs

Revised figures show a summer slowdown, with 13,000 jobs lost in June

U.S. job growth continued to slow down in August, a sign that the labor market is deteriorating markedly.

The government also revised its numbers from earlier in the summer, and said the economy lost a net 13,000 jobs in June. It was the first such decline since December 2020.
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