With its executive order targeting the Smithsonian, the Trump administration opens up a new front in the history wars

  I teach history in Connecticut, but I grew up in Oklahoma and Kansas, where my interest in the subject was sparked by visits to local museums.

  I fondly remember trips to the Fellow-Reeves Museum in Wichita, Kansas and the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. A 1908 photograph of my great-grandparents picking cotton has been used as a poster by the Oklahoma Historical Society.

  This love of learning history continued into my years as a graduate student of history, when I would spend hours at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum learning about the history of human flight and ballooning. As a professor, I’ve integrated the institution’s exhibits into my history courses.

  The Trump administration, however, is not happy with the way the Smithsonian Institution and other U.S. museums are portraying history.

In Alabama abortion fight, it’s conservatives against conservatism

  There are two sorts of conservatism.

  There’s the kind espoused by the 18th-century British politician Edmund Burke. It emphasizes restraint; reverence for tradition and maintaining political and social order through mutual duty. Laws must prevent mob rule at the bottom and tyranny at the top. Change is acceptable but not revolution. One should work with the world as it is, inside a moral framework aware of human shortcomings.

The never-ending sentence: How parole and probation fuel mass incarceration

  The U.S. operates one of the largest and most punitive criminal justice systems in the world. On any given day, 1.9 million people are incarcerated in more than 6,000 federal, state, and local facilities. Another 3.7 million remain under what scholars call “correctional control” through probation or parole supervision.

  That means one out of every 60 Americans is entangled in the system — one of the highest rates globally.

Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs are the highest in decades − an economist explains how that could hurt the US

  President Donald Trump unveiled a sweeping new tariff plan on April 2, 2025, to reshape U.S. trade and boost domestic industry.

  Framing the announcement as “Liberation Day,” he proposed a 10% tariff on essentially all imports, with steeper rates for major trade partners, including 34% on Chinese goods and 20% on those from the European Union. On April 3, a 25% tariff on all foreign-made cars and auto parts took effect – a move that he says will revive U.S. manufacturing and reset America’s trade agenda.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse - Legislature needs to let Alabamians vote on lottery and sports betting

  Over the past ten years, the following question has been posed to me, “Flowers, why in the world does Alabama not have a lottery, and why can’t we receive the revenue from gambling that every one of our surrounding states and almost every state in America thrives on?” 

Congress’ war on math

  The congressional majority is seeking to extend expiring portions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). Relative to sunsetting these tax cuts as provided under current law, the cost of their extension would be $4 trillion over the coming decade—or around $400 billion per year. But, instead of reflecting this reality, the majority is attempting to force the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) to say the fiscal impact is instead zero dollars by using a “current policy” baseline rather than the “current law” baseline that is defined in statute. This approach is unprecedented in the 50 years since the CBO was formed and Congress acted within the current budget framework.

First they came for the cowards

  When I read about the capitulation to President Trump by the big law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, I couldn’t help thinking about the capitulation of lawyers in countries like Germany and Chile.

  Paul Weiss is based in Washington, D.C. and employs around 1,000 lawyers. Its income last year was around $2.6 billion. Upset that the firm had taken positions not to his liking, Trump targeted the firm with an executive order stating that “the Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence, and all other relevant heads of executive departments and agencies (agencies) shall immediately take steps consistent with applicable law to suspend any active security clearances held by individuals at Paul Weiss and Mark Pomerantz, pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest.”

Using all your strength

  A young boy was walking with his father along a country road. When they came across a very large tree branch the boy asked, “Do you think I could move that branch?”

  His father answered, “If you use all your strength, I’m sure you can.”

The age of deilocracy

  By middle school, we’re all taught that the word “democracy” combines “demos,” the Greek word for people, with “kratos,” meaning rule.

  Rule of the people.

  That doesn’t describe the government we live under.

  Alabamians say they want Medicaid expansion. They don’t seem keen on the state’s effective abortion ban. If you let Alabama voters decide whether the state should have a lottery, odds are that it would pass, and it wouldn’t be close.

U.S. swing toward autocracy doesn’t have to be permanent – but swinging back to democracy requires vigilance, stamina and elections

  The United States is no longer a democracy.

  At least, that’s the verdict of one nonprofit, the Center for Systemic Peace, which measures regime qualities of countries worldwide based on the competitiveness and integrity of their elections, limits to executive authority, and other factors.

  “The USA is no longer considered a democracy and lies at the cusp of autocracy,” the group’s 2025 report read.

  It calls Donald Trump’s second inauguration following a raft of criminal indictments and convictions, combined with the U.S. Supreme Court’s July 2024 granting of sweeping presidential immunity, a “presidential coup.”

Tesla and terrorism nonsense

  The 9/11 attacks provided the U.S. government with one of the greatest opportunities in U.S. history to destroy the freedom of the American people. Declaring a “war on terrorism,” federal officials seized upon the crisis to exercise omnipotent powers, purportedly to keep the nation “safe” from the terrorists who were supposedly hell-bent on coming to get us. In the process, the war-on-terrorism racket became as effective in destroying liberty as the war-on-communism racket had done throughout the Cold War.

  With the war on terrorism, U.S. officials don’t have to bother complying with constitutional restraints and the restrictions in the Bill of Rights. That’s because the U.S. is considered to be at “war.” Therefore, the executive branch is permitted to do pretty much anything it wants without concerning itself with interference by the other two branches — Congress and the federal judiciary. That’s a perfect recipe for the destruction of liberty.

Trump administration seeks to starve libraries and museums of funding by shuttering this little-known agency

  On March 14, 2025, the Trump administration issued an executive order that called for the dismantling of seven federal agencies “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” They ranged from the United States Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America, to the Minority Business Development Agency.

  The Institute of Museum and Library Services was also on the list. Congress created the IMLS in 1996 through the Museum and Library Services Act. The law merged the Institute of Museum Services, which was established in 1976, with the Library Programs Office of the Department of Education.