Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's diary entry on Substack for November 8, 2026. She explains how "One hundred and fifty years ago, after the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant believed the cause of the Confederacy was 'one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and for which there was the least excuse.' But when he accepted General Robert E. Lee’s surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia in the hamlet of Appomattox Court House, Virginia, in April 1865, he allowed Confederate soldiers to go home with only a promise that they would not take up arms again, in the hope that they would “be able to put in a crop to carry themselves and their families through the next winter.' It was a humanitarian gesture and also a practical one, for southerners were starving, and if they missed planting season, the devastation would get worse."

But following Lincoln's deaht, President Andrew Johnson pardoned most of the leaders of the rebellion, in hopes that they would support him. But those leaders claimed that the pardons were because Johnson recognized the virtue of their cause: "Within a decade, white southerners were lamenting the 'Lost Cause,' and northern sympathizers threw Black Americans overboard in their rush to reunite with white southerners against a government that worked for all Americans. The true history of the Confederacy—a brief rebellion against the United States to create a slave-holding nation—was whitewashed as a stand against federal overreach. As such, it endured, carrying racism and rebellion forward for more than a century."

Gerald Ford's preemptive pardon of Nixon for any offenses he may have committed further undermined the principle of accountability. "Nixon never publicly accepted responsibility for his obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress. Instead, Nixon blamed the press, whose members designed their 'leaks and accusations and innuendo' to destroy him.

Reagan also escaped accountability when his "advisors ignored both U.S. sanctions on Iran’s revolutionary government and the law prohibiting aid to the right-wing Contra rebels trying to overthrow Nicaragua’s Marxist Sandinista government. In what became known as the Iran-Contra affair, they sold highly marked-up arms to Iran, and sent the proceeds—off the books—to aid the Contras."

In 1989 the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, William Barr, wrote a memo warning officials in the George H.W. Bush administration to be wary of “legislative encroachments” on the president’s authority. When he later became attorney general, he backed Bush’s pardons of the eleven Reagan officials charged in the Iran-contra affair.

She continues: 

Barr went on to become the attorney general in Donald Trump’s first administration, and that administration continued the push against accountability. Then, after one grand jury charged Trump with 40 criminal counts for retaining and mishandling classified documents after he left office and then obstructing justice to cover up that retention, and a second charged Trump with four felony counts related to his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Trump moved to dismiss the cases on the grounds that “a President has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions performed within the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities.

On July 1, 2024, in Trump v. United States, the Supreme Court agreed, shattering the fundamental principle of U.S. democracy: that no one is above the law. Since returning to office, Trump has taken advantage of that immunity by turning the machinery of the federal government against those he perceives as his enemies.

She concludes:

“'[W]here, say some, is the King of America?' Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, the 1776 pamphlet that convinced British colonists in North America to cut ties with their king and start a new nation. '[I]n America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.'” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bookmark

The best bookmark.. 😅 https://t.co/8kInvbcZfo

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) November 7, 2026

Newsom proposes a "Buffett Rule" -- tax the rich

Click here for Gavin Newsom's Substack article of June 26, 2026, entitled "It's time for a national billionaires' tax and a new social compact," subtitled "We must democratize the American economy to save democracy."

Newsom opposes California's proposed wealth tax (the vote was held on November 3, but the results are not yet known; as of this writing, the vote is roughly 54% opposed, 46% in favor, with about 72% of the votes counted), on two grounds. First, he says, "You may not be able to pick up and move to Texas or Florida to shelter your income from taxation, but I promise you that billionaires can, and do. Wealth is movable, and it shops for the state with the lowest taxes. The fight belongs at the federal level, where this broken system was created in the first place." 

His second reason for opposition is the fact that the proposal dedicates 90% of the tax income to healthcare, effectively allowing one interest group (the healthcare workers' union that sponsored the initiative) to dictate a major portion of California's budget priorities. He specifically objects that the measure leaves out public schools, housing, homelessness programs, public safety, and other state priorities.

In a New York Times article in 2011 titled "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich," Warren Buffett famously complained that his secretary paid a higher rate of tax than he did. Newsom proposes "a modern Buffett Rule": He wrote: "So here is what I support: A national billionaires' tax."

His proposal includes:

• A minimum tax on people with net worth exceeding $100 million.

• Ensuring billionaires pay at least the tax rate paid by their own workers.

• Closing loopholes that allow wealthy people to borrow against stock portfolios without paying taxes.

• Changes to inheritance taxation.

• Restoring corporate tax rates to pre-2017 levels. 

  He writes:
  

  It’s clear that we are entering an entirely new economic paradigm. Automation could create unfathomable growth, but who benefits from that wealth? We need to ensure every American owns a stake in the future being built by AI through a national public equity fund that takes a major stake in the new economy. Simply, as artificial intelligence reshapes the country, every American should own a piece of the future it builds.
   

  Further: 

  There is a working coalition in this country of blue-collar and white-collar, urban and rural, the people who built this country and the people who are trying to find their place in it. They did everything right, and the system still has nothing for them. They are asking for the basics of a decent life, a home in a safe neighborhood, and a doctor they can see without dread. They need child care, an affordable college education, and something left over at the end of the month. What stands in their way is the federal tax code, a corporate code, and an inheritance code written for a different set of Americans. We can rewrite all three together at the federal level with a new social compact. It’s time for an economic reset for America.

  If we do act, it becomes a once-in-a-century chance to renew the American Dream by funding universal child care, making higher education and career training free, funding healthcare, and making a down payment on a real industrial policy for the AI century.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trump hardens his position.

Big news today:Trump fires his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and replaces here with MAGA hard-core Stephen Miller.

Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's diary entry, Letters from an American, on Substack for November 6.

 She points out how Trumpism, and with it the beliefs of Stephen Miller, were firmly rejected in Tuesday's election, and yet Trump appoints a hard-core ideologue as his chief of staff.

Miller was already assistant chief of staff, so things might not change much. But Miller has often been described as Trump's power behind the throne, and it looks as though, as Trump concentrates more and more on his vanity and home renovation projects, Miller might take even more control. 

  

Click here for Paul Krugman's Substack entry for November 6, 2026, titled "America's Backlash Against Oligarchy," subtitled "Why the megabillionaires lost big Tuesday." Here's a good chart illustrating political donations of the megarich:

 

That tiny billionaire elite spent massively in this year’s midterm elections, with the spending overwhelmingly in support of Republicans:

 

Best league in the world!?

I'll play this every time men criticize the level of play in the WNBA:

I think this explains the reason for the explosion in popularity of the WNBA better than any Angel Reese / Caitlin Clark argument ever could. https://t.co/t4mXvrhh69

— Sports Patriot (@SportsPatriotUS) November 7, 2026

Iowa Blue!

IOWA BLUE 💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙 https://t.co/dE2rGurRak

— Gaby :) (@ouatdemii) November 4, 2026

Nathalia Filgueiras

I am absolutely sickened by the horrendous comments directed at this heroic young woman who did her duty to the very end. She wasn’t even the Pilot in Command (PIC). Her job at that time was handling all the comms. The male pilot at the controls had already realized the graveness of the situation and had started praying as there was nothing either of them could do to save the aircraft. Do not listen to the cockpit audio of her last minutes, please. It should not even have been made public. Nathalia Filgueiras did her duty under the absolute worst of circumstances. She relayed factual information right up until impact while shoulder-rolling at 60° bank at 600 MPH. The information will be invaluable in the investigation. Even as she knew her short but amazing 20 years of life were about to end, she devoted those last seconds to saving future lives by providing critical information to ground control that will inevitably save lives in the future by preventing these types of crashes. The very definition of Heroism. At only 20 years old. 😭💔🕯️ Please keep her, her family and the other crash victims in your prayers. 💔😭😢🙏

— Lilith✡️🌈🖤🏳️‍🌈🪷💜 (@Lilith_Curses) November 2, 2026

The electoral pendulum is swinging

Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's Substack diary entry for November 2.

It summarizes Trump's ridiculous "closing argument for the midterm elections," his speech at the Reflecting Pool, where he rambled on about the pool for 16 minutes, then turning to the usual lies and wild exaggerations he's been spouting at every one of his rallies lately.

 Being a historian, she compares today's situation -- where "a small group of men has rigged the system to funnel the wealth produced by ordinary people into their own pockets. With that wealth, they have bought power and undermined democracy in favor of themselves" -- with similar situations the country has been in since its founding.

She starts with the push of settlers across the Appalachian Mountains into "the miraculously rich resources of the land to the west" discovered by Daniel Boone. She says the settlers "quickly discovered that equality was not the inevitable result of economic freedom. Some men settled on better land than others, some had family money, some were just lucky, and quickly, those men accumulated more than others."

Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, "which was designed to prevent wealthy men from dominating the new western lands. However, "over the next fifty years, a handful of wealthy enslavers tightened a stranglehold on the South. After 1854, when their intention to control the whole nation became obvious, Americans from a range of political parties came together to oust them from power. They created a government that worked to develop the economy from the bottom, educating young men and giving them land to farm. They tried to make America into a land where every man, regardless of race or background, could rise through hard work. They abolished human enslavement except as punishment for crime, then gave freedmen the vote to enable them to protect their own economic interests."

After the Civil War, "Money and power again began to concentrate at the top of society, among those who became known as “robber barons.” When their control of the government helped to crash the economy in 1893, the American people once again came together to oust them from power, and the Progressive Era recreated a government intended to work for everyone."

But then "The same old pattern of demonizing Black Americans and immigrants for supposedly stealing tax dollars repeated. Men determined to control the country insisted that government regulations and taxes took away a man’s liberty to run his business as he saw fit and undermined the individualism that made America great. In the 1920s, they convinced American voters to turn the government over to businessmen, whose policies, once again, concentrated wealth. When the bottom fell out of that system in 1929 with the Great Crash, Americans came together to demand government work for all Americans, rather than a privileged few."

The result was FDR's "New Deal," and "and most Americans thought the system that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and protected civil rights was so popular it would last forever."

But starting in 1980, Reagan began to undermine that system. Blaming "socialism," the Republicans cut regulations and taxes, helping money—"more than $50 trillion—move upward to the richest 1% of Americans. With it moved political power"

And so the U.S. finds itself in a situation today where voting is suppressed while billionaires pump money into the electoral system -- Elon Musk has spent at least $446 million, an astounding sum for a midterm election -- to buy Republican control of Congress. 

However, it seems the pendulum is swinging again: "the open looting of the government in Trump’s second term appears to have revealed to a majority of the American people that the policies the Republican Party has enacted since 1981 benefit only a few. Once again, it seems, Americans are coming together, ready to follow the pattern of the past and rebuild a government that works not just for the wealthy, but for everyone." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://x.com/pitlessball/status/2107939018721706395/video/1

Caitlin surrounded!

The single best play of the season https://t.co/veOHh8fjkK

— The WNBA is Openly Corrupt (@power_ties) October 24, 2026

Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American, her Substack diary, for October 4, 2026.

It's a short discussion of the Roaring '20s, the stock market crash (October 24, 1929, was the beginning; the market teetered on the edge until the bottom fell out on October 29, Black Tuesday), the Great Depression, and economic recovery and the New Deal under FDR. 

Witkoff backlash - Putin a humanitarian?

Steve Witkoff -- not a diplomat, but Trump's NYC real estate buddy acting as "special envoy for peace missions" --  is facing backlash after calling Vladimir Putin a “humanitarian” during talks in St. Petersburg, after Russia released American Stephen Hubbard from four years of detention. I've copy-and-pasted the following response from one of my favorites, Caring Guy, on Twitter. It's in the form of a reply to Witkoff:

WTAF is wrong with you? Stop emarrasing the US. 

You actually stood in front of Vladimir Putin today and called him a humanitarian. You thanked him for releasing a 74-year-old American whom his government had wrongfully imprisoned for more than four years. I’m glad Stephen Hubbard is free, but apparently you need a history lesson about the man you’re praising. 

Let’s start with Ukraine. Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of a sovereign country in February 2022, launching a war that has killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of people. Russian forces have bombed residential neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, and critical civilian infrastructure. They’ve destroyed entire communities, attacked power grids, and left families without electricity and heat during freezing winters. According to the United Nations, at least 2,570 civilians were killed and another 15,211 injured in Ukraine during just the first nine months of 2026. Those are verified casualties, not the total human cost of this war. 

Let’s talk about the Ukrainian children forcibly deported or transferred by Russian authorities. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin in March 2023 over alleged war crimes involving the unlawful deportation and transfer of children. A United Nations investigation subsequently concluded that Russian authorities committed crimes against humanity through these deportations and enforced disappearances. The investigators documented more than 1,200 affected children, most of whom had not been returned to their families. 

Then there’s Bucha, where Russian troops summarily executed civilians during their occupation. There’s the systematic torture of Ukrainian prisoners, sexual violence, enforced disappearances, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. United Nations investigators have documented these atrocities and concluded that Russian authorities committed multiple crimes against humanity. These aren’t accusations invented by Putin’s political opponents. They’re the findings of international investigations. 

And Putin’s record didn’t begin with Ukraine. Under his leadership, Russian forces devastated Chechnya, where human rights investigators documented disappearances, torture, and summary executions. In Syria, Russian forces helped Bashar al-Assad wage devastating military campaigns that struck hospitals, schools, markets, and residential neighborhoods. Human Rights Watch documented war crimes committed during those operations. 

Now let’s look inside Russia. Putin’s government has systematically suppressed political opposition, imprisoned critics, censored journalists, and criminalized antiwar dissent. Alexei Navalny, one of Putin’s most prominent political opponents, survived poisoning, was imprisoned, and died in Russian custody in February 2024. Russian authorities have continued persecuting his supporters and lawyers. 

And let’s not forget Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17. All 298 people aboard that civilian aircraft died when a Russian Buk missile brought it down over eastern Ukraine in 2014. International investigators subsequently identified strong indications that Putin authorized the supply of the missile system to Russian-backed separatists. 

Steve, diplomacy sometimes requires dealing with people responsible for terrible things. I understand that. But negotiating with Putin doesn’t require flattering him, ignoring his record, or pretending that releasing one wrongfully detained American somehow makes up for the suffering inflicted on millions of innocent people. 

You can thank Putin for releasing Stephen Hubbard without rewriting history. You can negotiate peace without abandoning the truth. And you can represent the United States without standing in front of a man wanted by the International Criminal Court and praising his humanitarian credentials. 

The people buried beneath the rubble of Ukrainian cities, the families searching for their missing children, the prisoners who have endured torture, and the millions driven from their homes deserve more than an American diplomat publicly praising the man whose government inflicted so much of that suffering. 

Do you even know what "humanitarian" means? 

Clinton-Trump debate, continued

An excerpt from Heather Cox Richardson's Substack entry for October 19, 2026:

It was exactly ten years ago tonight that then–Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told the American people that Russian president Vladimir Putin hoped to have a “puppet” in the White House, and that Donald Trump was that puppet.

A scowling Trump responded: “No puppet. No puppet.”

Clinton continued: “It’s pretty clear.

Trump interjected: “You’re the puppet.”

Clinton continued: “It’s pretty clear you won’t admit…”

Trump interjected: “No, you’re the puppet.”

Clinton: “...that the Russians have engaged in cyberattacks against the United States of America, that you encouraged espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do, and that you continue to get help from him because he has a very clear favorite in this race.”

Trump shook his head disparagingly.

Ten years later, Trump is openly embracing Putin and is working to destroy the strongest and most successful alliance in human history to cement that partnership, apparently with an eye to enriching himself.

Ukraine Betrayed

This is copy-and-pasted, an article by Anthony Scaramucci entitled "The Promise We Made in Budapest."

In December 1994, the United States made a promise. Ukraine had inherited the third-largest nuclear arsenal on earth when the Soviet Union collapsed, and it agreed to give every warhead away. In exchange, the Budapest Memorandum committed the United States, Russia, and Britain to respect Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty, and existing borders, and to refrain from threatening or using force against it. Ukraine kept its end of the bargain. Russia shredded its end in 2014 and again in 2022. And now an American president treats our end as if it never existed.

 

Look at what happened just this month. In Miami, American envoys floated expanded security guarantees that Ukraine’s team welcomed, and then the talks collapsed after President Trump agreed to ease sanctions so Russia could import hundreds of thousands of barrels of diesel, as part of a side deal with Vladimir Putin. Even a senior EU official in the room said the move caught negotiators by surprise. Now reports say he may cut off intelligence sharing with Kyiv.

 

Budapest was the bedrock of a bargain America has sold the world for thirty years: give up the bomb, and the great powers will respect your sovereignty. When the president walks away from that bargain to do Putin a favor, he is telling us whose side he instinctively takes when a dictator and a democracy collide.

 

Ask why. Vladimir Putin is the world’s leading practitioner of slowly dismantling a free society. He jailed and poisoned his opponents, crushed the independent press, turned the courts into instruments of the Kremlin, and rewrote the constitution to rule indefinitely. This is the man Donald Trump called a “genius” on the eve of the full-scale invasion. Admiration is not yet policy. But it is a preview, and we no longer have to guess what the preview looks like.

 

The deeper tell is how he treats promises, and the record at home already shows that. In September 2025, he publicly demanded on Truth Social that his attorney general prosecute James Comey, Adam Schiff, and Letitia James. The career U.S. attorney who doubted the cases was pushed out and replaced by Trump’s former personal lawyer, a woman with no prosecutorial experience, who secured indictments of Comey and James within weeks. A federal judge threw both cases out because she had been unlawfully appointed. Days after his inauguration, he fired seventeen inspectors general, the independent watchdogs that root out fraud, by two-sentence email, and a federal judge later called it “obvious” that he broke the law. A man who treats the nation’s word abroad as disposable treats the rules that protect you at home the same way.

The pattern runs straight through the First Amendment and into our streets. His FCC chairman threatened broadcasters’ licenses over their coverage of the Iran war, and the president cheered him on. He federalized the National Guard and sent troops into Democratic-led cities against their governors' objections, until courts, including the Supreme Court in the Chicago case, stopped him; his response was that it was only a matter of time before he sent them back. I served in that White House for eleven days, as everyone loves to remind me, and I saw how quickly the line between the country's interests and one man's grievances disappears. Our institutions are not self-executing.

They hold only because people inside them refuse to bend.

In 1994, the United States told a young democracy that it would respect its freedom if it disarmed. If this president will walk away from that promise to please Vladimir Putin, ask yourself what he would walk away from to please himself. The Bill of Rights is a promise too — that the government will not silence your speech, prosecute you for opposing it, or send soldiers into your city because your governor is from the wrong party. Defending the word we gave Ukraine and defending the freedoms we promised ourselves are the same fight. Watch what he does for Putin, because it shows you what he would like to do with his power over you.

Trump-Putin alliance

Any time before 2015, when Trump descended his golden escalator, who could have foreseen such a development, with the U.S. president wholeheartedly allying himself and his nation with Russia?

Russia-Russia-Russia was no hoax.

Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's October 18, 2026, diary entry on Substack.

She concludes her article:

But even given the evidence of the past ten years, it is truly astonishing to see Republicans, who for more than forty years have championed President Ronald Reagan for his stance against the Soviet Union, stand aside as Trump trashes the post–World War II system of global security in order to ally the United States with a Russian dictator. 

Trump's Nerobefehl (Nero Decree)

Click here for Paul Krugman's Substack article on October 14 entitled "Nerobefehl Nation," subtitled "My fears for the next two years."

  

On March 19, 1945, with the war no longer in doubt -- Soviets within 50 miles of Berlin, the Allies closing in from the west -- Hitler ordered that German infrastructure -- including transportation systems, industrial facilities, utilities, and communications -- be destroyed rather than let it fall into Allied hands.  The stated aim was to prevent the advancing enemy from using these resources.

However, by this time Hitler believed not that he had failed, but that the German people had failed him. The obvious purpose of the Nerobefehl was to punish his own country. Albert Speer and others prevented the order from being carried out.

Will Trump declare a Nerobefehl if, as expected, he suffers a crushing defeat in November's election? He will certainly insist the election was rigged and try to overturn it. If he fails, what then? He will retain the capacity to inflict immense destruction on America and its allies.

Today Elon Musk has denied Ukraine access to Starlink facilities giving warning of impending Russian missile strikes. Trump, in brazen defiance of a court order, had hundreds of trees cut down at a D.C. public golf course Trump has wanted to remodel -- a deliberate act of vandalism.  The Kennedy Center is being destroyed because Trump has been unable to put his name on it.

With a supine Congress and the backing of Trump's cadre of oligarchs, it will be difficult to curb his excesses.  Krugman closes his article:

But one thing Democrats can do is make it clear that everyone who aids and abets Trump in his Neroism can and will be held accountable to the full extent of the law. At this point anyone who says something like “We should look forward, not back” is making it significantly less likely that we will have anything to look forward to.