Letters from an American

4 days ago | heathercoxrichardson.substack.com | Heather Richardson

Just hours after President Donald J. Trump posted on social media yesterday that “[b]ecause of Tariffs, our Economy is BOOMING!” a new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said the opposite. Founded in 1961, the OECD is a forum in which 38 market-based democracies cooperate to promote sustainable economic growth. The OECD’s economic outlook reports that economic growth around the globe is slowing because of Trump’s trade war.

5 days ago | heathercoxrichardson.substack.com | Heather Richardson

On June 1, Ukrainian forces struck deep inside Russia in “Operation Spider Web.” One hundred and seventeen drones, each operated by its own pilot, hit airfields in five regions. Ukraine says the drones hit 41 strategic bombers that had been attacking Ukrainian cities and destroyed at least 13 of them. Russia does not have the industrial capabilities to replace them.

6 days ago | heathercoxrichardson.substack.com | Heather Richardson

The Republicans’ giant budget reconciliation bill has focused attention on the drastic cuts the Trump administration is making to the American government. On Friday, when a constituent at a town hall shouted that the Republicans’ proposed cuts to Medicaid, the federal healthcare program for low-income Americans, meant that “people will die,” Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) replied, “Well, we are all going to die.”The next day, Ernst released a video purporting to be an apology. It made things worse.

1 week ago | heathercoxrichardson.substack.com | Heather Richardson

Even as government agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ramp up their arrests and confrontations, the lug nuts on the wheels of the White House bus continue to loosen. On Wednesday, officers from the Federal Protective Service, which is part of DHS, handcuffed an aide in the Manhattan office of Representative Jerry Nadler (D-NY). Someone sitting in the office captured the confrontation on video.

1 week ago | heathercoxrichardson.substack.com | Heather Richardson

“I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition,” Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine told her colleagues on June 1, 1950. “It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear…. I speak as a Republican, I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States senator.