The Aporia · Heather Cox Richardson

2026-08-24 · Letters from an American

🔮 Mayo Clinic, Narrated by Dr. Stephen Ray Mitchell Dr. Stephen Ray Mitchell is an award-winning medical expert who currently serves as the Joseph Butenas Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics and Dean Emeritus for Medical Education at Georgetown University School of Medicine. assertive

2026-08-24 · Letters from an American

August 22, 2026

🔮 McMaster said Trump “thought it was a great idea” for her to replace her brother, and she has indicated her loyalty to Trump and her willingness to pass the SAVE America Act he so badly wants in order to rig the 2026 midterm elections. assertive

2026-08-25 · Letters from an American

August 24, 2026

🔮 Canada and the U.S. have shared military and defense capabilities, with the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) operating since 1957 to detect aircraft or missiles, especially those coming over the North Pole, that could prove a threat to the United States (NORAD’s Santa Tracker originally was a way to make Americans aware of what NORAD did). assertive

2026-08-26 · Letters from an American

August 25, 2026

🔮 In contrast to MAGA’s performative nonsense, Canadian officials announced today that on September 8 they will begin to impose tariffs of up to 50% on about 700 products worth about $20 billion in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs on Canada. assertive

2026-08-27 · Letters from an American

August 26, 2026

🔮 The antennas of Chicago’s Willis Tower—formerly the Sears Tower—lit up pink, too. assertive

2026-08-28 · Letters from an American

August 27, 2026

🔮 Still, Smith points out, the apparent proof that Kennedy lied to Congress is a clear opening for hearings into Kennedy’s testimony, history, and conduct in office—including changing the vaccine schedule after promising not to—that would illuminate what has been happening to the U.S. government, information that would likely prove embarrassing to the Trump administration. assertive

2026-08-31 · Letters from an American

August 30, 2026

🔮 The book was written not to reflect the facts of Washington’s life—biographies would not focus on facts for almost a century—but to show virtues the nation’s youth should imitate and to establish a set of attributes against which future voters could judge those vying to lead the nation. assertive

2026-08-31 · Letters from an American

Week Fourteen in 250 to 250

🔮 She is one of the youngest mayors in the city’s history and is the first woman and the first Asian American to be elected to the office. assertive

2026-08-31 · Letters from an American

August 29, 2026

🔮 The push has come in the wake of the rise of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani and other naturalized U.S. citizens whose policy positions those like South Carolina representative Nancy Mace consider un-American. assertive

2026-08-31 · Letters from an American

August 28, 2026

🔮 “The nonviolent revolution is saying, ‘We will not wait for the courts to act, for we have been waiting for hundreds of years. assertive

2026-09-03 · Letters from an American

September 2, 2026

🔮 Still, after the 2024 election, hopeful Republicans set out to redistrict states like Texas to try to guarantee they would hold on to control of Congress after the 2026 election. assertive

2026-09-03 · Letters from an American

Kim Rogers, Founder of State + Local Election Alliance (SLEA) | American Conversations

🔮 Judge Luttig is sickened at the prospect that The Speaker of the house will fire the Clerk of the House and replace him with a Trump loyalist. assertive

2026-09-03 · Letters from an American

September 1, 2026

🔮 Nonetheless, as Josh Gerstein of Politico reported, the project will likely be completed before the question of its legality is resolved. assertive

2026-09-04 · Letters from an American

September 3, 2026

🔮 To stop voters from turning Republicans out of office and handing Democrats control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, or both, the Trump administration is trying to implement a new rule for the United States Postal Service that would enable it to act as a gatekeeper for who can vote by mail. assertive

2026-09-04 · Letters from an American

August 31, 2026

🔮 Plans to extend that alert made the Navy’s top admiral, along with leaders of the U.S. European Command, the U.S. Pacific Command and the U.S. Southern Command, register that they did not concur with those plans, although their disagreement does not mean they will not execute the order. assertive

2026-09-05 · Letters from an American

September 4, 2026

🔮 Their goal was to emphasize the importance of workers in the industrializing economy and to warn politicians that they could not be ignored. assertive

2026-09-06 · Letters from an American

September 5, 2026

🔮 According to officials who spoke with the reporters, the deal could mean moving as much as $2 billion from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—roughly one-third the budget of the agency Dr. Anthony Fauci used to run—to the Pentagon. assertive

2026-09-06 · Letters from an American

Week Fifteen in 250 to 250

🔮 Coit Tower, Narrated by Mayor Daniel Lurie Daniel Lurie is San Francisco’s 46th Mayor. assertive

2026-09-07 · Letters from an American

September 6, 2026

🔮 There’s a lot going on, but it feels like we could all use a break. mixed

2026-09-08 · Letters from an American

September 7, 2026

🔮 Let those who worship evil’s might beware my power… assertive

2026-09-09 · Letters from an American

September 8, 2026

🔮 When Musk posted “Well done!” in German to the co-founder of AfD, Alice Weidel, another AfD leader responded with thanks, posting: “If we take on responsibility here, I would very much welcome the opportunity for strong and constructive cooperation. assertive

2026-09-10 · Letters from an American

September 9, 2026

🔮 Wasn’t too much we could do, I’ll be honest. assertive

2026-09-11 · Letters from an American

September 10, 2026

🔮 GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis, Patrick De Haan, said the new record “will be a particularly painful one for the economy” and is “likely to reignite inflation up and down the supply chain.” assertive

2026-09-12 · Letters from an American

September 11, 2026

🔮 “That I will go out with my family, my friends, I’ll do it any way—I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try and cheat like hell like they do, they’d never, there’s never been bigger cheaters, they don’t care. assertive

2026-09-13 · Letters from an American

September 12, 2026

🔮 In the piece, Luttig outlined how Republicans could refuse to seat elected Democrats in January after a Democratic victory in the 2026 midterm elections of November. assertive

2026-09-14 · Letters from an American

September 13, 2026

🔮 He noted that July’s OpenAI–Hugging Face incident, in which programs designed to hack into systems found weaknesses that permitted them to escape the “sandbox” in which designers were testing them for about a week before anyone noticed had, luckily, been relatively harmless, but warned that “in my opinion, a swarm that possessed greater capabilities but a similar level of misalignment could have caused catastrophic damage.” assertive

2026-09-15 · Letters from an American

September 14, 2026

🔮 This morning, Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Mierjeski of ProPublica broke the news that Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the wedding of Donald Trump Jr. and Bettina Anderson in May. assertive

2026-09-16 · Letters from an American

250 to 250

🔮 Going forward, 250 to 250 will continue both as new videos—at a slower pace, now that the anniversary summer is over—and a new companion project for teachers, but we wanted to create an end bracket that would convey our thanks to everyone who has been so generous with their time, expertise, and support. assertive

2026-09-17 · Letters from an American

September 16, 2026

🔮 Cooper reiterated that Congress had prohibited such an addition and would have to change that law in order to make the addition of Trump’s name legal. assertive

2026-09-18 · Letters from an American

Politics Chat, September 17, 2026

🔮 Karl Rove wrote that he will vote for a Democrat in Texas this year, and Senator John Cornyn retweeted the piece. assertive

2026-09-18 · Letters from an American

September 17, 2026

🔮 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.” assertive

2026-09-19 · Letters from an American

September 18, 2026

🔮 Iran’s news agency reported today that a political advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader said Iran would not reopen the Strait of Hormuz until President Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu are removed from power. assertive

2026-09-20 · Letters from an American

September 19, 2026

🔮 Fears of another such uprising in the future led Virginia lawmakers to make sure poor men would not make common cause, passing laws to divide them along racial lines. assertive

2026-09-21 · Letters from an American

September 20, 2026

🔮 Out of the 59 top cities and Capitals, Washington, D.C., IS THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD THAT DOES NOT HAVE A TRIUMPHAL ARCH, but it will now and, by far, the greatest of them all! assertive

2026-09-22 · Letters from an American

September 21, 2026

🔮 Those people could still get day passes. assertive

2026-09-23 · Letters from an American

Politics Chat, September 22, 2026

🔮 In a UN speech, Trump suggested he might annihilate Iran and declared the United States would dominate the Western Hemisphere. mixed

2026-09-23 · Letters from an American

September 22, 2026

🔮 By tradition, Brazil speaks first because it was the first to volunteer to speak in 1955 when no other country would. assertive

2026-09-24 · Letters from an American

Pay-To-Play

🔮 The administration is reversing its previous emphasis on resettling refugees, focusing instead on expelling them, often to places where they will be tortured, and all with little oversight, assertive

2026-09-25 · Letters from an American

September 24, 2026

🔮 After Trump posted on social media that CNN and MS NOW (he called it MSDNC) were refusing to cover Xi’s visit “because they knew how good it would be, they didn’t want credit to be given to ‘TRUMP,’” the White House told CNN it could send only an audio producer and a cameraman to the event, not a reporter or producer. assertive

2026-09-26 · Letters from an American

September 25, 2026

🔮 The Preamble of the document promised that King George III and the United States of America would “forget all past misunderstandings and differences that have unhappily interrupted the good correspondence and friendship which they mutually wish to restore.” assertive

2026-09-27 · Letters from an American

September 26, 2026

🔮 Last night, Scott Nover of the Washington Post reported that the White House would not allow reporters from CNN on Air Force One as part of the press pool to cover the president as he traveled to Tennessee for a college football game. assertive

2026-09-27 · Letters from an American

Bad News Plagues the Administration

🔮 Last night, the White House would not allow reporters from CNN on Air Force One as part of the press pool, assertive

2026-09-29 · Letters from an American

September 28, 2026

🔮 With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. assertive

2026-09-30 · Letters from an American

September 29, 2026

🔮 The Trump v. United States decision sent Smith back to the drawing board to take the case, now stripped of anything that could fall under “official duties,” before another grand jury, and that grand jury returned an indictment for the same offenses. assertive

2026-10-01 · Letters from an American

September 30, 2026

🔮 In 2023 the Iraqi government called for complete U.S. withdrawal, and former President Joe Biden and former Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani agreed to a withdrawal plan in 2024, but Iraq allowed a small contingent of advisors to remain after that deadline when the collapse of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in Syria led to concerns that the confusion in Syria would allow militant Islamic groups to regain a foothold there. assertive

2026-10-02 · Letters from an American

October 1, 2026

🔮 The State Department told Hudson that Trump is prioritizing the Western Hemisphere and that the money would be better spent in Latin America than where Congress wanted it. assertive

2026-10-03 · Letters from an American

October 2, 2026

🔮 But as the middle class continues to erode, who will be the targets tomorrow?” In 2015, in rhetoric mimicking the classic blueprint of rising dictators, Trump tapped into the anger of people who felt they had been dispossessed from their rightful place of importance in the country and tapped into the country’s racism and sexism as he told them to blame immigrants and Democratic politicians for their plight. assertive

2026-10-04 · Letters from an American

October 3, 2026

🔮 The festival featured a “Freedom Village” where attendees could find ways to get involved in government, grassroots organizing, education, mutual aid, and social impact organizations. assertive

2026-10-05 · Letters from an American

October 4, 2026

🔮 On Friday night, just before 11:00, Trump announced that his administration “will, immediately, begin sending ‘Checks’ of nearly $100 to over 20 MILLION wonderful Seniors to help pay for their Medicare Part B premiums, which we have already reduced by significant amounts. assertive

2026-10-06 · Letters from an American

October 5, 2026

🔮 It has claimed—without evidence—that the men on the boats were trafficking drugs, but such a charge would normally be handled by the legal system. assertive

2026-10-07 · Letters from an American

October 6, 2026

🔮 “I never have empty seats—Never have, and never will assertive

2026-10-09 · Letters from an American

October 8, 2026

🔮 It was not clear, coming out of the Civil War, how Republicans would stand with regard to workers. assertive

2026-10-10 · Letters from an American

October 9, 2026

🔮 “Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things,” she wrote. assertive

2026-10-11 · Letters from an American

October 10, 2026

🔮 So now, after more than a decade of pretending that he is not associated with Russia and that he would honor the U.S. national security position of support for Ukraine and our European allies, Trump is openly backing Russia’s president Vladimir Putin. assertive

2026-10-12 · Letters from an American

October 11, 2026

🔮 This week I marked the end of another summer by spending as much time as I could on the water. mixed

2026-10-13 · Letters from an American

October 12, 2026

🔮 Adam Wren, Meredith Lee Hill, and Will Steakin of Politico report that Trump’s super PAC, “MAGA Inc.,” is coordinating with other super PACs to try to salvage the Republicans’ control of the Senate. assertive

2026-10-16 · Letters from an American

October 15, 2026

🔮 Then, as corruption becomes the party’s driving force, the only people willing to work for it are either corrupt themselves or so unqualified they support the corrupt leadership to gain power, knowing that in a merit-based system it would be entirely out of their reach. assertive

2026-10-17 · Letters from an American

October 16, 2026

🔮 Trump said he would let her decide if she wanted to stay but added that if he were in her shoes, he would “reconsider.” assertive

2026-10-18 · Letters from an American

October 17, 2026

🔮 It was not until close to 6:00 Eastern time that the No Kings account could be used again. assertive

2026-10-19 · Letters from an American

October 18, 2026

🔮 The reporters explained that a three-way summit with China and the U.S. would cement Russia’s status as one of the world’s three great powers, a status Putin has sought since 2000 when he entered the Kremlin. assertive

2026-10-20 · Letters from an American

October 19, 2026

🔮 I am just through the door from several days’ travel and am wiped out, so this will not be a real letter. assertive

2026-10-21 · Letters from an American

October 20, 2026

🔮 Haberman and Swan note that forcing the press out of the White House would be “highly symbolic. assertive

2026-10-22 · Letters from an American

October 21, 2026

🔮 I continue to believe that he is holding photos, videos, whatever it might be.” assertive

2026-10-23 · Letters from an American

Politics Chat, October 20, 2026

🔮 Two days before congressionally mandated sanctions on Russia were set to take effect, Trump said he would waive them. assertive

2026-10-23 · Letters from an American

October 22, 2026

🔮 He continued: “If Trump wanted to help Ukraine militarily and with starshield he could. assertive

2026-10-25 · Letters from an American

October 24, 2026

🔮 Consumers rushed to buy them, along with ready-made clothing, beauty products, and cars, all of which the new advertising industry, which grew out of the government propaganda campaigns of World War I, promised would bring them glamor, sophistication, romance, and power. assertive

2026-10-26 · Letters from an American

October 25, 2026

🔮 He promised the new tariffs he intended to impose would create an economic miracle. assertive

2026-10-27 · Letters from an American

October 26, 2026

🔮 Obama told attendees that El-Sayed is “fighting for change, real change, that will get money out of politics and put money in your pocket” and would “finish the job we started with the Affordable Care Act and guarantee quality, affordable healthcare to every single American.” assertive

2026-10-28 · Letters from an American

October 27, 2026

🔮 Three weeks ago, many observers thought Bolsonaro would win the election. assertive

2026-10-29 · Letters from an American

October 28, 2026

🔮 After losing the election to become Brazil’s president on Sunday, he suggested he would contest the results of the election, and Brazilian authorities asked him to give up his Brazilian passport because he is under investigation for laundering more than $1 billion through an online gambling scheme, and for financial irregularities involving a bank regulators shut down for fraud. assertive

2026-10-30 · Letters from an American

October 29, 2026

🔮 U.S. officials told the reporters that the government will likely grant them permanent residency later. assertive

2026-10-31 · Letters from an American

October 30, 2026

🔮 Those voters might not be highly engaged in politics in general, but they cannot miss the country’s rising prices, especially the cost of gasoline and diesel—and the food delivered by vehicles that use them—resulting from Trump’s war on Iran. assertive

2026-11-01 · Letters from an American

October 31, 2026

🔮 But that was as far as he went with the Republican plans for a future in which every man, regardless of race, would have the right to the fruits of his own labor. assertive

2026-11-02 · Letters from an American

November 1, 2026

🔮 They did not explain how such a ballot could be reviewed or how reviewing a ballot would explain if a voter was confused. assertive

2026-11-03 · Letters from an American

November 2, 2026

🔮 We will not know the results of the midterm elections until after the polls close and votes are counted, but early voting and polling suggest this election will see a Democratic wave. assertive

Forward-looking sentences extracted from their articles, oldest first. Nothing here checks whether any of it turned out to be right.

👤 Heather Cox Richardson

About this journalist

What they cover

Leaning

More from this journalist

What they said would happen