Author: Heather Cox Richardson

On MS NOW, columnist Philip Bump broke down when talking about the January 7 shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. “I have a six year old,” he said. “And … seeing the image of the stuffed animals in the glove compartment of her car—really emotional for me and … what I take away from this is, for me that’s the thing that stands out: that this was a family that could have been like mine.” Bump went on to emphasize that “there are a lot of situations, a lot of incidents that have involved ICE, have involved the...

Five years ago, on January 6, 2021, more than 2,000 rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to stop the process of counting the electoral votes that would make Democrat Joe Biden president of the United States. They tried to hunt down House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and chanted their intention to “Hang Mike Pence,” the vice president. They fantasized that they were following in the footsteps of the American Founders, about to start a new nation. Newly elected representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) wrote on January 5, 2021: “Remember these next 48 hours. These are some of the most...

January 3 was the legal deadline for the Department of Justice to submit to Congress a written justification for any documents from the Epstein files that the department had redacted or withheld. But it seems unlikely the Justice Department met this deadline because it has missed the December 19 deadline for releasing the files themselves. Both of those deadlines were established by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed overwhelmingly by Congress on November 19, 2025. Information from those files continues to trickle out. Those that have been released suggest the Department of Justice considered charging “co-conspirators” and that Trump...

Speaking on December 21 at Turning Point USA’s annual “AmericaFest” conference, Vice President J.D. Vance said, to great applause: “The only thing that has truly served as an anchor of the United States of America is that we have been, and by the grace of God we always will be, a Christian nation.” Actually, we haven’t. Vance’s statement flies in the face of our Constitution, whose First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” James Madison of Virginia, the key thinker behind the Constitution, had quite a lot...

The Trump administration released the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) of the United States of America quietly on December 5. As foreign affairs journalist at “Politico” Nahal Toosi noted, the release of the NSS is usually accompanied by fanfare, as it shows an administration’s foreign policy priorities and the way it envisions the position of the U.S. in the world. The Trump administration’s NSS announces a dramatic reworking of the foreign policy the U.S. has embraced since World War II. After a brief introduction touting what it claims are the administration’s great successes, the document begins by announcing the...