The Cornerstone Speech; U.S. Senator Alexander Stephens, 1861

Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's Substack diary entry for March 21, 2026.

On March 21, 1861, former U.S. senator Alexander Stephens of Georgia delivered what history has come to know as the Cornerstone Speech, explaining how the ideology and power of elite enslavers in the American South were about to usher in a new era in world history.

Speaking in Savannah, Georgia, just before he became the vice president of the Confederate States of America, Stephens set out to explain once and for all the difference between the United States and the Confederacy. That difference, he said, was human enslavement. The American Constitution had a crucial defect at its heart, he said: it based the government on the principle that humans were inherently equal. Confederate leaders had fixed that problem. They had constructed a perfect government because they had corrected the Founding Fathers’ error. The “cornerstone” on which the Confederate government rested was racial enslavement.

 And then:

Less than a month after Stephens gave the Cornerstone Speech, the Confederates fired on a federal fort in Charleston Harbor, and the Civil War began.In 1863, using his authority under the war powers, Abraham Lincoln— now president of the United States— declared enslaved Americans free in the areas still controlled by the Confederates. In 1865, Congress passed and sent off to the states for ratification the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting human enslavement except as punishment for crime and giving Congress the power to enforce the amendment. The states approved the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1865. 

And finally:

Rejecting the worldview Stephens thought would come to dominate the globe, Americans used the moment in which men like Stephens reached for supremacy to enshrine the principles of the Declaration of Independence into the American Constitution. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments ushered in a very different sort of new era than Stephens imagined. It was, in large part, the tearing apart of old political systems under those like Stephens that permitted the rise of new ones that redefined the United States. Stephens thought he was heralding a new world, but in fact he marked the end of an era.

The shaping of the next era belonged not to him, but to others with a clearer view of both the meaning of the United States of America, and of humanity.

 

Fraudster pardons fellow fraudsters, promises to eliminate fraud

On March 17, Trump signed an executive order creating a Task Force to ELIMINATE Fraud.

According to Ron Shillman on Twitter, here are people convicted of fraud and pardoned by Trump this term -- and he's only been in office a little over a year: 

Jason Galanis — ~$200M+ 

Joseph Schwartz — ~$38M 

Lawrence Duran — ~$205M (Medicare fraud)

Carlos Watson — ~$60M investor fraud

Trevor Milton — ~$20M+ investor losses 

Todd Chrisley — ~$30M bank fraud 

Julie Chrisley — ~$30M bank fraud 

Devon Archer — ~$60M tribal bond scheme 

George Santos — ~$44K–$1M+ (multiple fraud schemes) 

Michele Fiore — ~$70K charity fraud 

Brian Kelsey — ~$90K campaign finance fraud 

Scott Jenkins — ~$75K bribery/fraud scheme 

Paul Walczak — ~$10M+ tax fraud 

Adriana Camberos — ~$1M+ counterfeit/fraud 

Trump's "Save America Act" explained

Click here for an article in The Guardian by Rachel Leingang, March 13, titled "What does Trump's restrictive voting bill include -- and does it have a chance of becoming law?" The subtitle is "Every voter would be affected by the Save America Act, as people would face more barriers to voting: 'It's a recipe for disaster.'"

Senate Republicans say they don't have enough votes, so the bill will fail -- but "While the fate of the legislation remains unclear, the damage may already be done. If it doesn’t pass, the talking points surrounding it will play into false election narratives for Trump and his allies, giving fodder for ongoing conspiracies about stolen elections."

Here's the problem:

Even if the bill doesn’t pass, talking points around it will animate the midterms. Trump is likely to use his bully pulpit to falsely claim noncitizens are voting en masse in US elections, and that Democrats and some Republicans stood in his way to prevent addressing the problem through the Save America act.

The bill is another way Trump has tried to assert more control over elections, which are run by state and local officials in manners set by state and local rules.  Trump has suggested that the US government should federalize elections. An executive order he issued that attempted to enact many of the Save act’s provisions has largely been blocked by the courts. In early February, he said on a podcast that Republicans should “take over” and “nationalize” elections in 15 states to protect the party from being voted out of office.

Voting rights advocates are concerned that he will claim election results are invalid in places that don’t require proof of citizenship, Bedekovics said. The bill relies on a false narrative of voter fraud by noncitizens, and the Save America act gives another way to revive that narrative and dispute results, Persad said.

“This is likely an attempt to sow the seeds of doubt about an election that the president appears to believe his party is going to lose,” Becker said.

The Republicans are trying to end democracy in the U.S. They want a North Korean-type state, where there is no dissent and everyone bows to The Dear Leader, and where Democrats can never win another election.

Is the United States a country worth fighting for?

It's right-wing Republican Tucker Carlson asking the question. Two strikes 40 minutes apart; a "double tap" targeting rescue workers who came to the scene? The girls' school was in the immediate vicinity of a naval training station that was the American target, and the students were mostly children of Iranian naval officers. We automatically give the U.S. the benefit of the doubt, thinking it must have been a tragic accident; Carlson raises the question: What if it was deliberate?

Are Americans bad people?

According to the polls, most Americans think their fellow citizens are bad people.

Click here for Robert Reich's Substack post on March 10, entitled "Why do Americans hate each other while Canadians love each other?" Subtitled "Could it have something to do with our politics? With the sociopath in the Oval?"

Once Trump took office, dislike of our fellow citizens soared.

Before he entered the White House, 47 percent of Republican and 35 percent of Democrats said people in the opposing party were “immoral.”

By 2022, after years of Trump’s venom: 72 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of Democrats called people in the opposing party “immoral.”

Since he’s been back in the Oval, it’s got even worse.

Reich says: "At the opposite end of the spectrum from the United States is Canada, where 92 percent say their fellow Canadians are good, while just 7 percent say they’re bad."

Reich had an interesting conversation 30 years ago with right-wing Republican  Senator Alan Simpson, when Simpson said:

Democrats viewed Republicans as stupid and Republicans viewed Democrats as evil. “I’d rather be in the stupid party,” he chuckled.

I asked him why Republicans saw Democrats as evil.

He took a deep breath. “Religion.”

I said I didn’t understand.

“It’s the Christian right,” he said as if talking to a five-year-old. “Since Reagan, my party has been a magnet for religious conservatives and Christian fundamentalists, where it’s all about good and evil. Too bad, pal. You’re on the evil side.”

That was thirty years ago. Since then, the divide has only sharpened.

 

 

Pete Hegseth is worse than you thought.

Click here for an article in The Guardian entitled "‘A very dangerous person’: alarm as Pete Hegseth revels in carnage of Iran war," subtitled "Critics say brash, bombastic Fox News host out of his depth to guide US military through murky new Middle East conflict."

It's a devastating takedown of Hegseth and his juvenile antics, which would be funny if it weren't for is dangerous White Christian Nationalist views and the enormous power he holds, with Trump's complete backing.

Stupid, sad, and sleazy indeed

Click here for Robert Reich's March 4 article on Substack, entitled "The Stupidest, Saddest, Sleaziest of Spectacles," in which he laments how far his beloved Department of Labor has fallen (Reich was Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, from January 1993 to January 1997).

Two DoL officials, chief of staff Jihun Han and deputy secretary Rebecca Wright, were fired; Reich claims it's to shield the person who really should go, Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Reich says:

I think Han and Wright are taking the rap for Chavez-DeRemer, who’s still facing allegations of drinking during the workday from a “stash” of alcohol in her office, taking subordinates to an Oregon strip club while on an official trip, and having an affair with a member of her security team.

In January, unnamed sources described Chavez-DeRemer as the “boss from hell,” saying she demanded staffers run personal errands for her or perform other menial tasks unrelated to their government jobs.

Meanwhile, her husband has been barred from the Frances Perkins Building after female staff accused him of unwanted sexual advances. His lawyer says the accusers are in cahoots with department employees to force Chavez-DeRemer out of office.

More than two dozen department employees from across the political spectrum describe in interviews with The New York Times a toxic workplace characterized by an absentee secretary, hostile aides, and a deeply demoralized staff.

 Reich says further:

From what I hear, other departments are nearly as bad. Pete Hegseth’s Department of “War” suffers ongoing turmoil. Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security is in shambles. Pam Bondi’s Justice Department is a wreck.

Almost every department and agency of the federal government has become a back-stabbing rat’s nest. Total pandemonium. Career staff against political appointees and vice versa, political appointees against other political appointees. Blatant misuses of taxpayer dollars, self-dealing, conflicts of interest, sexual predation, abuses of lower-level employees.

This is what you get when you have a president and White House staff who don’t give a rat’s ass about who they appoint to positions of power except for their loyalty to Trump and how they look on television. Along with Republicans in Congress who don’t oversee these departments because they couldn’t care less.

When Biden became president, I thought that the administration's good will and competence would convince the American public that Trump was a disaster -- but Trump's lies and propaganda resulted in 77 million voting for him. Have they learned their lesson yet?