Texas

Trump: “I’ve stopped six wars … I’m averaging about a war a month”

by

Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

Heather Cox Richardson

July 31, 2025

On Monday, at a meeting with U.K. prime minister Keir Starmer in Scotland, President Donald Trump boasted that he was solving all the world’s problems: “I’ve stopped six wars in the last—I’m averaging about a war a month. But the last three were very close together. India and Pakistan, and a lot of them. Congo was just and Rwanda was just done, but you probably know I won’t go into it very much, because I don’t know the final numbers yet. I don’t know. Numerous people were killed, and I was dealing with two countries that we get along with very well, very different countries from certain standpoints. They’ve been fighting for 500 years, intermittently, and we solved that war. You probably saw it just came out over the wire, so we solved it….”

Yesterday, as Jeff Tiedrich noted, he promised he would fix the United States as well. “I think we’re gonna have the richest economy you’ve ever seen. We have money coming in that we’ve never even thought about, at numbers that nobody’s ever seen before. We have a deal with Japan where they’re going to pay us $550 billion. We have a deal with Europe where they’re doing 750 billion plus 400 billion, plus 300 billion, and many other countries.”

Today the administration announced that Trump is adding a 90,000-square-foot event space to the White House. The White House itself, excluding the East Wing and the West Wing, is about 55,000 square feet. Groundbreaking for the new ballroom, which will replace the East Wing, is supposed to start in September, although it is not clear who picked the architects or the design. The administration says Trump and private donors will fund the building, which is estimated to cost around $200 million.

The announcement says that “[f]or 150 years, Presidents, Administrations, and White House Staff have longed for a large event space on the White House complex that can hold substantially more guests than currently allowed.” Traditionally, the White House has been called “The People’s House” because it symbolizes that the government belongs not to the temporary inhabitant of the building but to the American people.

And yet it seems as if rather than representing the people’s government, Trump is trying to turn that historic building into the kind of property in which he is comfortable, something like Mar-a-Lago, where he can host parties in a big gold room.

It certainly doesn’t seem as if much governance is going on in Trump’s White House. As Josh Marshall pointed out today in Talking Points Memo, when the head of the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy resigned today, it turned out that the White House had never formally appointed him in the first place. Marshall added: “We’re six months into this administration and it wasn’t even clear whether this guy was ever in the position at all…. And now he’s gone from the position…that he may or may not have held. This is the state of things from the very top to the very bottom of this administration. And the impact of that is bleeding out into every aspect of the society and economy.”

Trump’s claim that he has ended six wars is pure fantasy, and as for his boasts that Europe and Japan are going to pay huge sums of money to the U.S.—which is not actually how trade deals work—the European Union and the U.S. have already published different versions of what was in the agreement between them, although that agreement itself was only preliminary.

Economist Paul Krugman wrote yesterday that the European Union appears to have promised private investments of $600 billion in the U.S.—an empty promise because the government cannot compel private investment—and pledged to buy $750 billion of U.S. energy, mostly from oil and gas, over three years. Krugman calls this pledge nonsense. Among other things, it would require significant increases in infrastructure capabilities, which couldn’t be built in three years even if anyone wanted to, which is unlikely given that Europe is switching to renewable energy quickly.

There also seems to be significant daylight between what Trump is claiming and what Japan says about their agreement, which was thrown together in just over an hour on Tuesday. Japan’s negotiator said the $550 billion investment was not “a target or commitment” but an upper limit, and Japanese officials said that “no written agreement with Washington” was made—“and no legally binding one would be drawn up.”

Meanwhile, Trump appears to be trying to exert his will by fiat, announcing new tariff rates tonight just hours before the self-imposed deadline of August 1. Today, after a federal appeals court heard a challenge to Trump’s tariffs on the grounds that Congress, not the president, is the only body the Constitution empowers to enact tariffs, the White House announced a base tariff rate of 10% on countries to which the U.S. exports more goods than it imports, with a 15% rate for countries that export more to the U.S. than they import. About a dozen countries—including Canada—will have even higher rates.

Before Trump started his trade war, U.S. tariff levies stood at about 2.4%.

Part of Trump’s determination to demonstrate his power is likely coming from the continuing unraveling of his involvement in the affairs of late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. On Tuesday, Trump seemed to try to cast himself as the protector of girls from Epstein, but his suggestion that he had turned on his friend after Epstein had hired 16-year-old Virginia Giuffre away from Mar-a-Lago in 2000 immediately attracted attention to the actual timeline of the friendship between the two men. It showed that their friendship lasted quite a bit longer. In fact, it was in 2002 that Trump told New York Magazine that Epstein was a “[t]errific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Members of Giuffre’s family said in a statement yesterday: “It was shocking to hear President Trump invoke our sister and say that he was aware that Virginia had been ‘stolen’ from Mar-a-Lago. It makes us ask if he was aware of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal actions, especially given his statement two years later that his good friend Jeffrey ‘likes women on the younger side…no doubt about it.’ We and the public are asking for answers; survivors deserve this.”

Tonight Trump told reporters he doesn’t know why Epstein was taking girls from Mar-a-Lago.

“Trump is on the List! Now with cane sugar!”

by

Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

Heather Cox Richardson

July 21, 2025

On Friday, G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers reported that “polls show Trump’s position plummeting.” On Friday morning, the average job approval rating for Trump was 42.6% with 53.5% disapproving.

Those numbers break down by policy like this: Gallup polls show that only 35% of Americans approve of Trump’s immigration policy with 62% opposed. A new poll out from CBS News/ YouGov today shows that support for Trump’s deportations has dropped ten points from the start of his term, from 59% to 49%. Fifty-eight percent of Americans oppose the administration’s use of detention facilities. The numbers in a CNN/SSRS poll released today are even more negative for the administration: 59% of Americans oppose deporting undocumented immigrants without a criminal record while only 23% support such deportations, and 57% are opposed to building new detention facilities while only 26% support such a plan.

American approval of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is unlikely to rise as news spreads that last Monday, the government gave ICE unprecedented access to the records of nearly 80 million people on Medicaid, allegedly to enable ICE to find undocumented immigrants. Kimberly Kindy and Amanda Seitz of the Associated Press reported that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services signed an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security that enables ICE to access Medicaid recipients’ name, ethnicity and race, birthdate, home address, and social security number.

Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid, although they may use it in an emergency to cover lifesaving services in a hospital emergency room. The release of personal information from Medicaid lists is unprecedented. Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) warned: “The massive transfer of the personal data of millions of Medicaid recipients should alarm every American…. It will harm families across the nation and only cause more citizens to forego lifesaving access to health care.”

Trump’s tariffs are not popular. An Associated Press–NORC poll on Thursday found that 49% of Americans thought Trump’s policies have made them worse off while only 27% think his policies have helped.

And then there are the Epstein files.

A YouGov poll from Tuesday showed that 79% of Americans think the government should release all the documents it has about the Epstein case while only 4% think it should not. Those numbers included 85% of Democrats, but also 76% of Independents and 75% of Republicans. And that was BEFORE the publication of the Wall Street Journal article detailing the lewd and suggestive birthday letter Trump apparently contributed to Epstein’s fiftieth birthday album.

As Morris notes, Trump is underwater on all the issues of his presidency, but he is most dramatically underwater over Epstein.

You don’t need polls to see that Trump, at least, is panicking. He is throwing red meat to his base in what appears to be an attempt to regain control of the narrative. After his July 12 threat to strip comedian and talk show host Rosie O’Donnell of her citizenship (she was born in New York, and he does not have that power), he has kept up a stream of social media posts that seem designed to distract his wavering followers from the news around them.

On Wednesday, Trump announced on social media: “I have been speaking to Coca-Cola about using REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so. I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola. This will be a very good move by them—You’ll see. It’s just better!”

But Coca-Cola had apparently not gotten the memo. It uses cane sugar in a number of foreign markets but has used high-fructose corn syrup in U.S. products since 1985. On its website, it wrote: “We appreciate President Trump’s enthusiasm for our iconic Coca‑Cola brand. More details on new innovative offerings within our Coca‑Cola product range will be shared soon.”

Social media users posted memes of Coke bottles emblazoned with the words “Trump is on the List” and, in small letters below, “Now with cane sugar.”

On Thursday, after observers had noted both the president’s swollen ankles and what appeared to be makeup covering up something on his hand, the White House announced that Trump has been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, a condition that his physician described as a “benign” and common condition in which veins don’t move blood back to the heart efficiently.

Trump has never offered any information about his health, and his doctors have presented accounts of his physical exams that are hard to believe, making observers receive this announcement at this moment with skepticism. “Chronic venous insufficiency is a condition where the veins in the legs have difficulty drawing attention from the fact that the Epstein Files still haven’t been released,” one social media meme read.

Today, Trump posted on social media: “The Washington ‘Whatever’s’ should IMMEDIATELY change their name back to the Washington Redskins Football Team. There is a big clamoring for this. Likewise, the Cleveland Indians, one of the six original baseball teams, with a storied past. Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen. Their heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from them. Times are different now than they were three or four years ago. We are a Country of passion and common sense. OWNERS, GET IT DONE!!!”

Hours later, he posted that his post “has totally blown up, but only in a very positive way.” Then he threatened to block the deal to move the Commanders back to Washington, D.C., from a Maryland suburb unless they “change the name back to the original ‘Washington Redskins.’”

At the turn of the last century, those worried that industrialization was destroying masculinity encouraged sports to give men an arena for manly combat. Sports teams dominated by Euro-Americans often took names that invoked Indigenous Americans because those names seemed to them to harness the idea of “savagery” in the safe space of a playing field. By the end of the twentieth century, the majority of Americans had come to recognize the racism inherent in those names, and colleges started to retire Native American team names and mascots. In 2020 the Washington football team retired its former name, becoming the Commanders two years later. At about the same time, the Cleveland baseball team became the Cleveland Guardians in honor of the four pairs of art deco statues installed on the city’s Hope Memorial Bridge in 1932.

Trump’s attempt to control the narrative didn’t work. “The thing about the Redskins and Indians is that Donald Trump is on the Epstein list,” one social media user wrote. The post was representative of reactions to Trump’s post.

Today marked the end of the first six months of Trump’s second term, and he marked it with a flurry of social media posts praising his performance as “6 months of winning,” and attacking those he sees as his opponents. He again went after the Wall Street Journal, which ran the story about Epstein’s birthday album. He complained the paper had run a “typically untruthful story” when it said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had had to explain to Trump that firing Fed chair Jerome Powell would be bad for markets. Trump took exception to the idea he did not understand the interplay of the Fed and markets, despite his repeated threats against Powell.

“Nobody had to explain that to me,” he wrote. “I know better than anybody what’s good for the Market, and what’s good for the U.S.A. if it weren’t for me, the Market wouldn’t be at Record Highs right now, it probably would have CRASHED! So, get your information CORRECT. People don’t explain to me, I explain to them!”

Tonight, Trump’s social media posts seemed to project his own fears on Democrats he perceives as enemies. He once again claimed Senator Schiff, who managed one of the impeachment cases against Trump when he was a representative, had falsified loan documents in 2011 and should go to prison. In 2023, a judge determined that the Trump Organization had falsified loan documents. Trump posted: “Adam Schiff is a THIEF! He should be prosecuted, just like they tried to prosecute me, and everyone else—the only difference is, WE WERE TOTALLY INNOCENT, IT WAS ALL A GIANT HOAX!”

On Late Night with Stephen Colbert last Thursday, Schiff said: “Donald, piss off…. But Donald, before you piss off, would you release the Epstein files?”

Trump also posted an image of intelligence agents and politicians in prison garb as if in mug shots, and reposted both an image of what appears to be lawmakers in handcuffs and an AI-generated video showing former president Barack Obama being arrested by FBI agents and then being held in a jail cell.

Meidas Touch posted: “The crazy thing about Donald Trump posting an AI video of Obama getting arrested is that Trump once had someone organize a party for him and invite a bunch of ‘young women’ and it turned out Jeffrey Epstein was his only other guest.” Alan Feuer and Matthew Goldstein broke the story of that party in Saturday’s New York Times.

American households will see $3,000 increase in the cost of goods due to Trump’s tarrifs

by

Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

Heather Cox Richardson

July 10, 2025

Just a week ago, Republicans in the House of Representatives passed the nearly 1,000-page budget reconciliation bill President Donald Trump demanded, and at the signing ceremony for the bill the next day, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) announced Republicans were “laying a key cornerstone of America’s new golden age.”

But the past week has shown a nation—and an administration—in turmoil.

On July 4, the day Trump signed the bill, flash floods devastated central Texas, leaving more than 100 people dead and about 160 still missing. Local officials immediately blamed cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) for the disaster, but reviews showed that NWS meteorologists had predicted the storm accurately and had sent out three increasingly urgent warnings at 1:14 a.m., 4:03 a.m., and 6:06 a.m.

But four hours passed before the police department in the City of Kerrville issued a warning. It wasn’t until 7:32 that the city urged people along the Guadalupe River to move to higher ground immediately. The missing link between the NWS and public safety personnel appears to have been the weather service employee in charge of coordinating between them. He took an unplanned early retirement under pressure from the “Department of Government Efficiency” and has not been replaced.

Then, as Gabe Cohen and Michael Williams of CNN reported, search and rescue teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) could not respond to the disaster because Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose department is in charge of FEMA, had recently tried to cut spending by requiring her personal sign-off on any expenditure over $100,000. That order meant FEMA couldn’t put crews in place ahead of the storm, or respond immediately. Noem didn’t sign off on the deployment of FEMA teams until Monday, more than 72 hours after the flooding started.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, told Cohen and Williams that Noem did not authorize FEMA deployment because DHS used other search and rescue teams. “FEMA is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens,” McLaughlin told CNN in a statement. “The old processes are being replaced because they failed Americans in real emergencies for decades.”

“DHS is rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, and is reprioritizing appropriated dollars. Secretary Noem is delivering accountability to the U.S. taxpayer, which Washington bureaucrats have ignored for decades at the expense of American citizens,” McLaughlin said. Noem has called for the elimination of FEMA.

Meanwhile, FEMA’s acting director, David Richardson, has been nowhere to be found, making no public appearances, statements, or postings on social media since the disaster, and not visiting the site. Former FEMA officials told Thomas Frank of Politico that Richardson’s absence suggests Noem is controlling the FEMA response. Trump appointed Richardson after his team fired his first appointee, Cameron Hamilton, for telling Congress he did not think FEMA should be scrapped.

The day after he took office in May, Richardson, who has no experience with emergency management, told staff: “Don’t get in my way…because I will run right over you. I will achieve the president’s intent…. I, and I alone in FEMA, speak for FEMA,” he said.

Even as rescuers were still at work today in Texas, DHS cancelled a $3 million grant that had been awarded in New York to make sure the NWS can communicate effectively with local officials.

Tariffs are back in the news as Trump’s postponement for his high tariff has ended. They are as chaotic and as problematic as ever.

On April 2, Trump announced tariffs on countries around the world. He said that, beginning on April 9, he would impose a baseline tariff of 10%—a significant increase from the 2.5% rate then in effect—and additional tariffs of up to 50% on countries using a bizarre formula apparently cooked up by his trade advisor, Peter Navarro.

Immediately the stock market lost more than $5 trillion. So rather than let the tariffs go into effect on April 9, Trump pushed the start of the tariffs off until Wednesday, July 9 (yesterday), vowing to negotiate trade deals with individual countries rapidly: 90 deals in 90 days, Navarro said. But only two deals have been forthcoming—one with the United Kingdom and one with Vietnam—meaning that on July 9 the high tariffs of April 2 would take effect.

Then, on Tuesday, Trump announced on social media the real date for the start of the tariffs would be August 1. Somewhat bizarrely, he told reporters he had not changed the date the tariffs would go into effect, although on Monday he signed an executive order changing the date of the start of the levies from July 9 to August 1.

Throughout the week, Trump has been sending letters to world leaders informing them that he intended to impose high tariffs on their countries unless they negotiated with him. At a press opportunity at a cabinet meeting, as Danielle Kurtzleben of NPR noted, he tried to rebrand his letters as deals. “A letter means a deal,” he told reporters. “We can’t meet with 200 countries. We have a few trusted people that know what they’re doing, that are doing a good job, but you can’t do it. You have to do it in a more general way. But it’s a very good way. It’s a better way. It’s a more powerful way.”

On Tuesday, Trump also announced a 50% tariff on copper. Copper is vital to the defense industry, batteries, electric wires, plumbing, and so on, and the U.S. imports more than half of what it uses. Trump claims to want to see the U.S. produce the copper it needs, but getting the industry to that point will take years. He also announced a 35% tariff on goods from Canada.

Paul Wiseman of the Associated Press notes that the 10% tariffs are apparently here to stay because the administration needs that money to cover some of the hole the new tax cuts from the budget reconciliation bill will blast in the deficit.

While Trump continues to insist—incorrectly—that foreign countries pay tariffs, his former vice president Mike Pence reiterated the truth today. On Bloomberg “Surveillance,” he said of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s boast that tariffs will bring in $300 billion this year: “Well, tariffs are a tax, and American importers and businesses and, ultimately, consumers pay almost all of that. And so literally a week after we managed to extend the Trump-Pence tax cuts and prevent a $2,000 tax increase on working families, the administration is right now boasting of the fact that the average American household is going to see about $3,000 increase in the cost of goods.”

Last month, Trump nominated Department of Justice prosecutor Emil Bove to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, covering Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and the Virgin Islands. Bove is a Trump loyalist who defended Trump in his criminal indictments and participated in firing officials who investigated Trump and the January 6 rioters. He was also a central player in the dropping of corruption charges against New York mayor Eric Adams and the rendition of Venezuelan migrants to the CECOT terrorist prison in El Salvador.

On June 24, Erez Reuveni, a former Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyer, filed an official whistleblower complaint about abuses in the department. Reuveni was fired after telling a court that the administration had made an error when it rendered Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia to CECOT despite a court order not to do so. In the whistleblower complaint, Reuveni alleged that the leaders at the Department of Justice and the White House had deliberately defied court orders and “engaged in unlawful activity, abused their authority, created substantial and specific threat to health and safety.”

Reuveni alleged that Bove insisted the planes carrying the men to El Salvador must take off and that he said DOJ “would need to consider telling the courts ‘f*ck you’ and ignore any such court order.” Reuveni then laid out the events of the March days in which the men were deported, along with the determination of the Department of Justice to violate the orders of the court.

Bove told the Senate Judiciary Committee last month he had “no recollection” of saying “f*ck you” to the court and said he had never advised the Department of Justice to violate a court order. Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on social media that Reuveni was a “leaker asserting false claims.”

Today, Senate Democrats released a trove of documents Reuveni had provided the committee, backing up his complaint. Texts and emails confirm that Department of Justice lawyers misled Judge James Boasberg, one telling him that he did not know when the Trump administration intended to deport the men when, as one of Reuveni’s colleagues said, “I can’t believe he said he doesn’t know. He knows there are plans for AEA removals within the next 24 hours.”

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement Thursday that Bove “belongs nowhere near the federal bench.” “This is about more than a random f-bomb,” he said. “This is a declaration of defiance of our courts at the highest level of our government by a man who now seeks a lifetime appointment to one of the highest courts in our land.”

Today a federal judge appointed by Republican George W. Bush granted class action status to a lawsuit challenging Trump’s executive order attacking birthright citizenship. With that status in place, U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante barred the administration from denying citizenship to U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants. Judge Laplante paused his ruling for a week to give the administration time to appeal.

Trump himself lost his appeal of a New York jury’s verdict that he must pay writer E. Jean Carroll $5 million for sexually abusing and defaming her. Trump now has 90 days to appeal to the Supreme Court to take the case.

Tonight the White House posted on X an image of “SUPERMAN TRUMP”—a much younger Trump dressed as the famous superhero, fists clenched, against a gauzy background—with the caption “TRUTH. JUSTICE. THE AMERICAN WAY.”

Guns or Fireworks

by

 

America is not its government and normal does not mean right

By Sarah Kendzior | July 7, 2025
 

t was a nasty, low-down week so I bought myself a 38 Special. I got it from a peddler down by the river. “Look to the sky before you buy,” the peddler warned. “No refunds!”

I was way ahead of him. There are no takebacks on the Fourth of July in 2025, only take-froms. No refunds, only defunds. AI takes jobs and ICE takes people and cruelty takes its toll.

That’s why I got a 38 Special: fifty ride tickets for thirty-eight dollars, to be shared by me and my husband and our two children, for one last round of memories.

We were in St. Charles, Missouri, the town where Lewis and Clark departed for their 1804 expedition. Their westward journey led to the creation of the contiguous United States and the genocide of indigenous tribes and, ultimately, to the Riverfest Fourth of July celebration my family was attending with thousands of people from hundreds of backgrounds, all now called Americans — a designation the Trump administration wants to strip away.

I wondered what Lewis and Clark would think of the festivities. Clark would probably approve. He was governor of the Missouri Territory and as such loved pomp and violence. Clark is not merely buried in St. Louis, but, as his tomb proclaims, “interred under the obelisk.” As for Lewis, he blew his brains out on the Natchez Trace. No one knows why. Maybe he could see America coming.

My carnival ride ticket package was named after the .38 Special revolver cartridge. Gun culture is inescapable in Missouri.

Every Fourth of July, St. Louis plays a guessing game called “Guns or Fireworks.” The goal is to detect whether the explosions we hear are sky sparklers or deadly weapons, both fired in celebration. A St. Louis child can tell the difference by the time they are old enough to talk and horrify adults with their newfound skill set.

“Guns or Fireworks” isn’t normal? the child asks, and I say, Normal’s what you’re used to, and you know nothing else. Then I pack up the car to show them other ways of life.

Normal has been given too wide a berth, one I try to narrow when I discuss history or current events. Normal is often a cover story for wrong. Slavery was normal. Genocide was normal. “White-collar crime”, “collateral damage”, “ethnic cleansing”: normal. Euphemized, euthanized, eulogized.

The concentration camp the Trump administration built in Florida is being marketed as normal. It has a cheeky name and merchandise. Right now, it disgusts many Americans. As concentration camps become more common, they will offend fewer people — and they will be called normal. When this happens, you must remember that normal is not the same as right, no more than law is the same as justice.

* * *

Riverfest was full of fun, unsafe rides. My daughter and I headed for the Ferris wheel. Comforting dad rock blared from the speakers. “You don’t know how it feels,” Tom Petty wailed, and I sang along, “You don’t know how it feels—”

“No, you don’t know how it feels,” a carnie joined in, pointing at me and grinning.

“To be me-e-e-e-e-e-e!” the carnie and I sang in unison, pointing at ourselves, then high-fiving each other. My daughter watched us in fascination and horror.

“Tom fuckin’ Petty!” the carnie exclaimed. I agreed.

He told us to buckle in for a real good ride. I wondered if he always wanted to be a carnie or if it just happened. He looked around my age. Our generation didn’t have dreams: we had circumstances. Boomers bought the ticket and we took the ride, round and round on a rotting wheel. On the rare occasions we hit the top, we treasured the view before the plunge.

I felt happier on the Ferris wheel than I had in a long while. I was sure this was not wasted time. There was a breeze, there was my daughter, and a view of our future plans below. The Scrambler, a decrepit sun-torched spinner which burned me as it thrilled me. The homemade Plinko game run by a charity where we all won free prizes and bought a bottle of hot sauce to compensate. The halal food truck staffed by hijab-wearing women blaring country music. The man in star-spangled suspenders playing the saxophone in a blissed-out groove. The Black BBQ stands, the Thai ice tea shacks, the Germans offering “the best wurst”.

We could see all of America from St. Charles. The scene was unpredictable and wild and generous: the opposite of the money-drenched fascist bill passed one day before.

* * *

The first time my children saw fireworks was in 2016. My youngest was five, and I decided he was old enough to go to Riverfest after dark. I also knew who would win the election, and I was scared this would be the last Fourth of July. Or that Riverfest would become something rigid and xenophobic and cruel, impossible to celebrate even as a contradiction. That fear never waned.

There are missing years: the 2019 flood that canceled the event and led us to a carnival at the Ozzie Smith Sports Complex where Pat Benatar was inexplicably performing; the missing early covid years; the blank summer of 2023, when personal tragedy left me in a stupor, unable to leave home. 2025 feels like that too, but I pushed through. If 2025 has a lesson, it’s to make memories while you can.

On the Fourth of July, if we get lucky, we buy fried Oreos and picnic by the Missouri River. Fried Oreos are my favorite dessert, but I only eat them when they are fleeting, like at a festival. Once I found a restaurant that served them, but it felt wrong. Fried Oreos are the morels of junk food: they must be found in the wild to be enjoyed.

We watched a family of geese play, goslings toddling on the muddy shore. I did not know it, but as we enjoyed our day, floods were killing dozens in Texas, including children. On social media, liberals left vicious comments claiming Texas deserved it: comments like the ones I get when Missouri is hit with natural disasters. Comments similar to the vile appraisal of migrant children, whom Trump supporters want imprisoned; or of Palestinian children, whom fanatical Zionists believe deserve death.

There is something soul-shattering about seeing people enjoy the suffering of a child. You hope that such hateful people are not real, that they are bots or operatives, but they often are not. They are people who believe the worst cruelty is so normal that they can express it without social penalty.

There are also people who will mourn one group of children, but not others: as if every lost child were not a tragedy, as if all parents did not grieve. Part of me cannot believe that the inherent humanity and innocence of children needs to be spelled out, but the depth of callousness necessitates it.

“Unspeakable tragedy,” people used to say, meaning sadness so deep it cannot be expressed. But we must speak of tragedies as tragedies, and of cruelty as cruelty. When we don’t, it becomes “normal” — or even celebrated. Early 20th century postcards depicting Black babies being fed to alligators are circulating on the Trump-era internet.

These are death cult days. What was I celebrating on the Fourth of July? Life, outside of this inhumane version of America. Life, in a version of America as vibrant and real as the sadist nightmare that seeks to suppress it. Life, while we have it.

There was not one immigrant at Riverfest for whom I did not fear deportation or incarceration — and non-immigrants, too. A government does not pass a bill designating a record amount of money for secret police without sweeping intent.

We didn’t use all the tickets in my 38 Special. We gave the rest to a family with small children, who shrieked at their good fortune. My husband and I remembered when our children were small, and people did that for us. We want the chain to continue.

We didn’t return for the fireworks either. Months ago, my daughter, now technically an adult, had purchased a Minion firework at a gas station. She and her brother wanted to watch their childhood favorite explode. I could hear them from my bedroom that night, laughing. I could hear gunshots too.

I took comfort in the sound. Not in my perverse ability to tell the difference between guns and fireworks, but in knowing why the guns were being fired.

For now.

* * *

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