WORTHYNOTE

They had homes before they became displaced people. Families had lived on the same land long enough for ordinary life to become inseparable from place. Children knew streets, farms, schools, places of worship, neighbors, burial grounds and family histories. Then a stronger power acquired the ability to determine where they could live, where they could travel, whether they could return, and how much control they would retain over their future. Property disappeared from family

Former federal appellate judge J. Michael Luttig has identified a plausible way Republicans could create a constitutional confrontation after the 2026 midterm elections. His concern deserves attention. His description of that confrontation as potentially “The Final Battle for America’s Democracy” grants the proposed maneuver far more power than the constitutional system automatically gives it. Heather Cox Richardson’s subsequent synthesis places Luttig’s warning beside other

A fifth-grader running for student council can promise a new soda machine. The promise sounds good. The details can wait. Who approves it, who pays for it, where it goes, who maintains it, and whether the student council has any authority to buy one are problems for another day. The promise has already done its job. Donald Trump brought that same level of planning to a $5,000 promise involving more than $1 trillion of public money. On September 9, 2026, Trump told the Republi

Condemnation has ethical force only when the standard survives a change of identity. Moral judgment becomes unreliable when outrage rises or falls according to religion, political party, nationality, race, ideology, profession, or personal allegiance. Facts properly change conclusions. Evidence properly changes conclusions. Circumstances properly change conclusions. The rule used to evaluate those facts must remain recognizable from one case to the next. Once affiliation begi

September 11 does not belong to anyone who wants to enlarge himself inside its history. It belongs to the 2,977 people who were killed, to the people who escaped, to the families who waited for calls that never came, and to the responders who entered buildings already becoming graves. The FDNY lost 343 members. Thousands more spent days and months breathing the pulverized remains of buildings, machinery, chemicals and human beings. Twenty-five years later, the federal World T

J.D. Vance left behind far more than a stray insult about Donald Trump. He left years of statements, interviews, essays, tweets, emails, direct messages, and recorded appearances that described Trump in language severe enough to read now like an indictment written by the man who later became his vice president. The record began before the 2016 Republican nomination had even been settled. In December 2015, writing privately to his Yale Law School classmate Sofia Nelson, Vance

Lake Ontario has carried its name since long before the United States existed. Canadian government records trace “Ontario” in connection with the lake to about 1641. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, roughly 135 years later. The Province of Ontario was created in 1867 and bears the same name as the lake. On August 27, 2026, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14420 directing the federal government to rename that body o

For more than a decade, federal law has recognized a basic corruption problem created when public officials can convert privileged government information into private financial gain. Congress enacted the STOCK Act in 2012 specifically to prohibit members and congressional employees from using nonpublic information derived from their official positions for personal benefit. Fourteen years later, lawmakers from both parties are still trying to strengthen that principle. Republi

Callaway’s decision on August 27, 2026, to end its relationship with Good Good Golf, strengthen its content-review procedures, take internal corrective action, and commit $1 million to organizations working to prevent violence against women represents a substantial corporate response. It also follows Callaway’s admission that the advertisement at the center of the controversy had been approved by Callaway before publication. CEO Chip Brewer acknowledged that the approval shou

Dolly, Losing you feels strangely personal for someone most of us never met. You were simply there for so long, smiling beneath all that hair, covered in rhinestones, laughing that unmistakable laugh, carrying yourself with such ease that your fame somehow never seemed to make you inaccessible. You belonged to country music, certainly, but you also belonged to road trips, family rooms, movie nights, weddings, breakups, bad jobs, childhood memories and mornings when somebody n

Golf gets away with a lot. A round can start before lunch with a cooler full of beer. Players drink while driving motorized carts. Gambling is woven into the game. Grown men scream at each other, throw clubs, wreck carts, harass beverage-cart workers, turn the course into a bachelor party and call the whole thing tradition, fun or simply part of golf. Behavior that would get someone thrown out of another business can be shrugged off once there is a tee box nearby. That tolera

Voting is among the most powerful tools an American citizen possesses because it reaches government power at its source. An individual cannot command the military, appoint judges, sign legislation, or personally remove an officeholder. The ballot is the citizen’s means of deciding who receives those powers. The Supreme Court has called voting a “fundamental political right” because it is “preservative of all rights.” A presidential system that can count the people’s votes, id

A scruple was once a small sharp stone. The Latin scrupulus described something tiny enough to lodge underfoot and irritating enough to affect the next step. The word eventually entered the language of conscience. A scruple became that persistent discomfort a person feels when something deserves closer attention because it may be wrong. The old image survived because it describes something deeply human. A person notices the stone, feels it, and decides what to do next. Being

Donald Trump has already tried this once this year. On February 6, he opened the United States to an additional 80,000 metric tons of lean beef from Argentina. The reason came directly from the White House. America had too few cattle. Drought, wildfires and the closure of Mexican cattle crossings after New World screwworm detections had squeezed supply. Ground beef had become painfully expensive. Imported lean beef, the administration said, would help fill the gap while Ameri

The Trump administration inherited a federal public-health system with its weaknesses already documented. On January 8, 2025, twelve days before Donald Trump returned to office, the Government Accountability Office reported that the Food and Drug Administration had failed to meet statutory targets for domestic food inspections since 2018. FDA officials identified limited workforce capacity as the agency’s primary obstacle. As of July 2024, FDA had 432 investigators assigned t

The August 11 derecho tore through Northwest Indiana with winds approaching 100 miles per hour and left Gary with extraordinary damage to its electrical system. More than 20,000 customers in the city were still without power more than a week later. NIPSCO reported that roughly 300 distribution poles and 44 transmission poles in Gary needed repair or replacement, and the company projected that some customers might remain without electricity until August 25. Gary is 76.2 percen

Donald Trump returned to office after an election in which the economy dominated the case for his presidency. The 2024 Republican platform promised to “DEFEAT INFLATION, AND QUICKLY BRING DOWN ALL PRICES.” It described inflation as a “crushing tax on American families,” pledged to rein in wasteful federal spending, and tied foreign policy directly to household costs: “War breeds Inflation while geopolitical stability brings price stability.” Senator Roger Marshall made the ca

“You are all that matters to me,” Natalie Harp wrote to Donald Trump. In another letter, she told him, “I don’t ever want to let you down,” then thanked him for being her “Guardian and Protector in this Life.” Elsewhere she wanted to recover “that synergy” they once shared, when “we’d talk about everything and nothing,” and told him, “I want to bring you joy, to feel like we can get through a day without ever having to talk ‘work.’” The letters were written during the years i

The Twenty-Second Amendment appears to settle Donald Trump’s future in one sentence: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.” Trump was elected in 2016 and again in 2024. A third election to the presidency is prohibited by that text. Congress chose the word elected when it proposed the amendment in 1947. Elsewhere, the Constitution speaks of a Vice President who may become President, a Vice President who may act as President, and a Presiden