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Quotes of the Month

The 117th Congress consisted mostly of members who were previously working in public service/politics, business, law or education. In fact, in total, Congress had only 1 physicist, 1 chemist, 1 geologist, and 9 engineers out of 541 members (100 senators, 435 representatives, and 6 non-voting delegates). Similarly, the current Supreme Court Justices mostly confined their employment history to the judicial and legal sector and their college majors were in nonscientific fields such as English, philosophy, politics and economics. Meanwhile, the EPA’s workforce consists of roughly 22% scientists (over 4,000 employees) and 14% engineers (over 2,000 employees). In 2018, for example, of the agency’s 13,758 employees more than half were engineers, scientists, and environmental protection specialists. Experts in the fields of major policy (e.g., climate change, the regulation of navigable waters, the toxicity and health consequences of specific pollutants, etc.) reside in the EPA rather than the legislative and judicial branches, allowing them to take congressional grants of authority via ambiguous language and apply it to developing and ongoing environmental challenges and crises. Given the disparity between expertise and experience with industry specific regulation in the legislative/judicial branches as compared to agencies like the EPA, Courts historically granted such agencies Chevron deference when it came to technical interpretations and agency actions regarding ambiguous statutory language. The Loper Bright majority, however, now states “agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities.” The majority has thus decided that the judiciary has a better understanding regarding the interpretation of vague statutes in highly technical fields because they are experts at interpreting the law. They claim that “delegating ultimate interpretive authority to agencies is simply not necessary to ensure that the resolution of statutory ambiguities is well informed by subject matter expertise. The better presumption is therefore that Congress expects courts to do their ordinary job of interpreting statues, with due respect for the views of the Executive Branch.” Not only does this on a similar assumption of congressional intent that the majority used to assert that the Chevron doctrine was unworkable and fail to define what qualifies as “due respect for the views of the Executive Branch,” but it also implies that the judiciary will be able to make highly technical determinations without relying on agency expertise.

~Kathleen “Kassie” Seavy, Elisabeth Haub School of Law, Pace University

When judges substitute their views of what is “best” for those of agencies, arguments about statutory meaning can quickly succumb to choices about policy. Avoiding such an outcome, of course, was one of Chevron’s core aims.

~Cary Coglianese, University of Pennsylvania Law & David Froomkin, University of Houston Law

Reading only Loper Bright, one would think the Court imagines itself in an ongoing dialogue with Congress. One would think the Court is not eager to impose its own policy values on Congress. One would think the Court is interested in effectuating legislative intent and furthering interpretive predictability. One would be wrong. Loper Bright’s pronouncements were convenient for overruling Chevron but do not reflect the Court’s approach to statutory interpretation. The stakes of these inconsistent pronouncements are especially high, as Loper Bright transfers even more interpretive authority to courts.

~Abbe R. Gluck, Yale Law & Yale Medical School

The Supreme Court is made up of nine life-tenured, unelected lawyers. By contrast, administrative agencies are subject to oversight by the elected branches and regulated through public notice-and-comment rulemaking. The Court’s decision makes clear that the Supreme Court views agencies’ flexibility and expertise in highly specialized areas as flaws.

~Danielle Fugere, President and Chief Counsel for You Sow

In the long term, this decision likely hamstrings the federal government’s ability to quickly address pressing and fast-changing issues, including climate change, but also across the full scope of federal authority, such as with health or safety regulations. It will make agencies less nimble in enacting new regulations in response to new problems and information. Meanwhile, Congress remains as gridlocked as ever, so legislation is unlikely to fill the gap in the near future.

~Foley Hoag, a climate action law firm

News of the Month

Once abortion was restricted and affirmative action was hobbled, the conservative legal movement set its sights on a third precedent: Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council (1984). It has been over 40 years since the US Supreme Court indicated in Chevron that courts should defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous law. (Deference, or judicial deference, is a principle of judicial review in which a federal court yields to an agency's interpretation of a law or regulation. The US Supreme Court has developed several forms of deference in reviewing federal agency actions, including Chevron deference, Skidmore deference and Auer deference.) The Chevron test established a simple approach to a traditionally complicated issue in administrative law by establishing what one judge called the Chevron two-step. A court first decides whether a law resolves the specific issue in question or is silent or ambiguous with respect to the issue. If it is determined that the law is silent or ambiguous, the court then affirms whether the agency's interpretation of the law is "reasonable."

The Chevron decision, one of the most cited in American law but largely unknown to the public, bolstered the power of executive agencies that regulate the environment, the marketplace, the work force, the airwaves, health care, government programs and countless other aspects of modern life. However, overturning Chevron was a key goal of the right for a number of years, part of an effort to demolish the administrative state. In June 2024, in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (and consolidated case Relentless v. Department of Commerce), a 6-2 majority of the US Supreme Court overruled the 40-year precedent and central target of right-wing groups, throwing out the Chevron deference doctrine and saying that courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency had acted within its statutory authority and not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a law was ambiguous. The Court’s ruling had ripple effects across the federal government, where agencies frequently use highly trained experts to interpret and implement federal laws.

Congress routinely writes open-ended, ambiguous laws that leave the policy details to agency officials. Chevron established the principle that courts must defer to agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous law. The theory is that agencies have more technical expertise than judges, are more accountable to voters (via presidential elections) and are better able to establish uniform national policies. “Judges are not experts in the field, and are not part of either political branch of the government,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in 1984 for the unanimous Court. Stevens later said of the opinion, which was easily his most influential, that it was “simply a restatement of existing law.” The decision was not much noted when it was issued. “If Chevron amounted to a revolution, it seems almost everyone missed it,” Justice Neil Gorsuch, the harshest critic of the doctrine on the current Court, wrote in 2022, saying that courts had read it too broadly.

At first, conservatives believed that empowering agencies would constrain liberal judges. “In the long run Chevron will endure and be given its full scope,” Justice Antonin Scalia, a revered conservative figure, wrote in a law review article in 1989, adding that this was so “because it more accurately reflects the reality of government.” The Reagan administration, which had interpreted the Clean Air Act to allow looser regulations of emissions, celebrated the decision. Justice Stevens, rejecting a challenge from environmental groups, wrote that the Environmental Protection Agency’s reading of the statute was “a reasonable construction” that was “entitled to deference.” During the January 2024 Loper Bright arguments, conservative Justice Samuel Alito expressed puzzlement about its history. “Chevron was initially popular,” he said. It was seen as “an improvement because it would take judges out of the business of making what were essentially policy decisions. Now, were they wrong then?”

If conservatives originally celebrated Chevron, what accounts for its current place on the conservative hit list? After all, as the case itself demonstrates, it requires deference to agency interpretations under both Republican and Democratic administrations. The reasons for the change are practical, cultural and philosophical. Chevron has led to numerous battles - for instance, over how far the EPA can go to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act and how far the FCC can go in mandating net neutrality. Business groups on the whole remain hostile to any regulation and Chevron has become a target for industries pushing a deregulatory agenda. Many conservatives have come to believe that executive agencies are dominated by liberals under both parties’ administrations - the so-called deep state. Around the second term of the Obama administration, the notion of overturning Chevron deference as a way to cut back on agencies’ ability to carry out federal law grew in popularity. Some on the right have become hostile to the very idea of expertise. But the attack on Chevron in 2024 was mostly fought on the idea of the separation of powers (which branch - courts or executive agencies - should fill in gaps in congressionally enacted laws), with conservative Justices insisting that courts rather than agencies must determine the meaning of ambiguous laws.

The plea to overturn the Chevron doctrine came to the Court in two cases challenging a rule (issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service) that required the herring industry to bear the costs of observers on fishing boats to prevent overfishing. The plaintiffs were backed by other industry groups ranging from Gun Owners of America to e-cigarette manufacturers. Applying Chevron, both the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and the US Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit upheld the rule, finding it to be a reasonable interpretation of federal law. The first case was Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, a dispute rooted in the financial intricacies of a federal fisheries law. Under Chevron, lower courts upheld the decision requiring fishing companies to bear the cost of mandatory independent monitors but the case became emblematic of a broader ideological battle over the extent of bureaucratic power in interpreting laws. Loper Bright asked the Justices to weigh in on the rule itself but also to overturn Chevron. Roman Martinez, representing the first group of fishing vessels, told the Justices that the Chevron doctrine undermined the duty of courts to say what the law is and violated the federal law governing administrative agencies, which similarly requires courts to undertake a fresh review of legal questions. Under the Chevron doctrine, he observed, even if all nine Supreme Court Justices agreed that the fishing vessels’ interpretation of federal fishing law is better than the NMFS’s interpretation, they would still be required to defer to the agency’s interpretation as long as it was reasonable. Such a result, Martinez concluded, is “not consistent with the rule of law.”

Arguing on behalf of the second group of fishing vessels (Relentless v. Department of Commerce), Paul Clement echoed Martinez’s points. Emphasizing that his clients’ case “well illustrates the real world costs of the Chevron doctrine” for small businesses, he decried the doctrine as “hopelessly ambiguous” and “reliance destroying.” The question in this challenge to the rule, he said should focus on what the best reading of the statute is. Representing the Biden administration, US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar urged the Justices to leave the Chevron doctrine in place, telling them that it had “deep roots in this Court’s jurisprudence.” Under the doctrine of stare decisis - the idea that courts should generally adhere to their prior decisions - the Court would need a “truly extraordinary justification” to overrule it, which the challengers did not have, she asserted. (The recording of the oral argument and transcript in Relentless are available, respectively, here and here.  The recording of the oral argument and transcript in Loper Bright are available, respectively, here and here.)

The arguments for overturning Chevron were centered on increasing judicial accountability and curbing what some saw as unchecked regulatory power. Some conservative judges believed courts must decide what laws mean without giving decisive weight to agencies’ views, saying most of the time these administrative law cases boil down to statutory interpretation, which is the expertise of judges, not the expertise of executive agencies. Critics of Chevron suggested this could lead to more consistent legal interpretations and less fluctuation in policies with changing administrations. Chevron’s opponents, including business groups hostile to what they saw as overregulation, said it was the role of courts, not executive agencies, to determine the meanings of laws. But, although the end of Chevron might result in more consistent agency policy from one administration to the next, it might also produce more (perhaps much more) variation in lower courts’ handling of agency cases. In this respect, then, the death of Chevron would mean greater uncertainty for regulated entities. Supporters of Chevron said the doctrine allowed specialized agencies to fill in gaps in ambiguous laws and to establish uniform rules in their areas of expertise, a practice, they said, that was understood by Congress.

Congress is already empowered to apply oversight of the federal bureaucracy because of its power to control funding and approve presidential appointments. Executive agencies submit annual summaries of their activities and budgets. Congressional committees are the primary venue for oversight and they hold hearings at which agencies are questioned and asked to provide information. Congressional committees conduct investigations and hold much of the responsibility for authorizing the activities and budgets of agencies. In conducting oversight, Congress investigates whether agencies have made policy decisions in a manner consistent with its interpretation of existing law. If Congress believes that agency decisions have violated its policy priorities, it can consult with agency personnel to alter their policy making decisions to converge with Congress’ favored positions. Oversight, then, allows Congress the opportunity to monitor and influence agency policy decisions. Perhaps Congress’s most powerful oversight tool is the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an agency that provides Congress, its committees and the heads of the executive agencies with auditing, evaluation and investigative services. It is designed to operate in a fact-based and nonpartisan manner to deliver important oversight information where and when it is needed.

The fear was that Chevron’s overturn would force a total overhaul of how industries are regulated in the US - taking power away from federal agencies and placing much more responsibility on federal courts. It could lead to a regulatory environment mired in legal challenges and uncertainty, hampering timely responses to public problems and crises. Chevron didn’t matter much to the Supreme Court, which had increasingly ignored it. But it did matter to the lower courts, which continued to use its two-step test to manage a flood of litigation challenging agency interpretations of every kind, from the most general to the most intricate. Roughly 17,000 lower court decisions had relied on Chevron since its inception in 1984, and they continued to do so regularly. A 2022 study surveying courts of appeals cases from 2020-2021 found that federal appellate courts continued to apply Chevron in nearly 85% of cases in which an agency interpretation was at stake. In approximately 60% of these cases, the court concluded that the statute was ambiguous (Chevron step one) and proceeded to determine whether the agency’s interpretation was reasonable (Chevron step two). According to the study, once courts of appeals reached this point in the Chevron framework, they sided with the agency 77% of the time. An earlier 2017 study that evaluated more than 1,300 courts of appeals cases from 2003 to 2013 found an even higher rate of deference to agencies’ positions - roughly 94% - at Chevron step two. In short, even if the Supreme Court had already stopped using Chevron in 2024, lower courts hadn’t. The decision expressly invalidating the Chevron doctrine would therefore have a major impact in the lower courts.

A complete overturning of Chevron wasn’t the only possible outcome. The Supreme Court could have opted for a nuanced approach, modifying rather than eliminating the doctrine. This could have involved setting more explicit criteria for when deference is warranted, thereby balancing the need for agency expertise in law interpretation with the concerns about unchecked administrative power. During the January 2024 arguments, US Solicitor General Prelogar told the Justices that the Court could “clarify and articulate the limits of Chevron deference without taking the drastic step of upending decades of settled precedent.” For example, she said, the Justices could “reemphasize” that, in determining whether a law was clear, courts should use all of the interpretative tools at their disposal and not “give up just because the statute is dense or hard to parse.” If the law was still determined to be ambiguous, she said, the question of whether it was reasonable should be “obviously deferential” but “not just anything goes.” The Court could have held that silence in a law did not constitute ambiguity for the purposes of the first prong of the test. Such a holding would have required Congress in future laws or legislative amendments to explicitly delegate authority over an issue to an administrative agency, saying that the agency can't act until Congress does. Obviously, though, it would be impossible for even a unified Congress to address every ambiguity in every law.

Instead, SCOTUS overruled the 40-year precedent, throwing out the Chevron deference doctrine. In so doing, SCOTUS decimated the president’s regulatory powers, transferring them to the courts. The decision marked a dramatic change in existing law, but its full implications remain unclear. Loper Bright will cause a total overhaul of how industries are regulated in the US - taking power away from federal agencies and placing much more responsibility on federal courts. It will lead to a regulatory environment mired in legal challenges and uncertainty, hampering timely responses to public problems and crises, as well as causing agencies to operate slower, less efficiently and less innovatively. Without Chevron, federal judges will be bogged down in intricate questions of statutory interpretation which require scientific, economic or technological expertise. Policy choices that are better suited to agencies with research and information-gathering capacity, and obligations to consult stakeholders, will increasingly be made by federal judges, who have none of their expertise and do none of those things. Judges will place more focus on the exact meaning of a law’s wording, and less on Congress’ goals or the real-life workability of federal laws. Dissenting Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown-Jackson, along with many other legal experts, foresee serious problems for future cases that turn on highly technical issues. What will happen when a law’s non-expert plain meaning makes no practical sense in a highly technical or scientifically nuanced regulatory system? The courts will then suddenly become policymakers.

For companies with the resources to challenge agency decision-making, the potential to overturn an unpopular agency decision will substantially increase, and the additional time it takes to obtain a decision could provide substantial competitive benefits. Agencies will likely compensate in their decision-making by increasing the amount of evidence used to support a decision or used to take enforcement action, thus making them more risk averse and increasing the cost and time for any regulatory and enforcement decisions (at taxpayers’ expense). Agency morale could be undermined, with regulators’ expertise and decisions second-guessed and criticized. The effects on agencies will transform the US administrative and regulatory landscape in diverse and unexpected ways. Opponents of all kinds of regulations meant to protect ordinary Americans will now be able to tie up proposed rules in court for years, putting Americans at risk in countless ways.

The Supreme Court’s decision on the Chevron doctrine was more than a legal debate. It was a pivotal moment. Overruling or significantly weakening Chevron disrupted the delicate balance between regulatory effectiveness and bureaucratic overreach, with dire consequences. Such a ruling made it easier to challenge regulations across a range of issues - keeping the air and water clean; ensuring that food, drugs, cars and consumer products are safe; and much more. In an era where issues such as health care, government benefit programs and climate change were at the forefront of public concern, the Supreme Court’s decision to revisit the Chevron ruling sent a worrying signal. Since 1984, the Chevron doctrine had been a linchpin in empowering agencies like the EPA to interpret and enforce complex environmental laws. Its overruling marked a significant setback for environmental governance and public health. Removing Chevron risks crippling the ability of agencies to effectively enforce environmental regulations. It puts dozens of existing environmental regulations on air, water and chemical pollution at risk. And it profoundly weakens the federal government’s authority to impose new regulations to limit climate change and to ban the use of asbestos and other toxins.

Health experts say a rollback of Chevron also hinders the administration of government insurance programs like Medicare and Medicaid, public health protections and scientific advancement. Federal health agencies have the subject matter expertise and the ability to deal with a range of complex issues in a timely way that Congress simply does not. The resulting uncertainty is extraordinarily destabilizing, not just to Medicare and Medicaid programs but also - given the size of these programs - to the operational and financial stability of the country's health care system as a whole. Perhaps the most important takeaway from Chevron’s overturn was that agencies now have less power and flexibility. The EPA now has less flexibility to create a regulation that protects the environment, for example, or the US Department of Labor to create a regulation that protects employees. Taking Chevron away resulted to a large degree in entrenching the status quo, for better or worse. In a post-Chevron world, agencies will likely shift away from making rules and toward providing guidance. In the long run, this weakens the amount of power agencies have in enforcing laws. In the past, a law might have been ambiguous, but an agency could still use Chevron deference to promulgate rules enforcing it and to penalize rule violators. Some companies will not comply with guidance if the cost is too high but if agencies want to make a rule to enforce the law, they now have to weigh whether it’s worth being challenged in court. This likely means that companies will be more aggressive in resisting regulation. The new regulatory landscape will likely be characterized by increased litigation. It will also likely be characterized by greater inconsistency in how federal laws are applied across different regions. The lack of deference means that a rule deemed "reasonable" by one court could be invalidated by another, leading to inconsistent, patchwork regulations across different circuits. In the absence of federal consistency, individual states may enact their own, differing regulations, further complicating compliance for national businesses.

Love it or hate it, the administrative state (which took shape as part of FDR’s New Deal) is the primary way modern American society imposes rules on businesses. Such regulations can cut into the profits of individual business owners but they are aimed at broadly helping all of society. Congress creates agencies staffed by technical experts to study various types of problems and empowers them to issue legally binding regulations. Now, Congress will be under pressure to draft more specific and detailed legislation to remove ambiguities, reducing the need for agency interpretation but, when congressional gridlock slows down or prevents legislation, it falls on federal agencies to take action. Overturning Chevron threatens a wide range of regulations that benefit the American society. It also threatens citizen organizations. If there are a greater number of challenges to EPA regulations, for example, more environmental organizations will feel the need to get involved legally to protect regulations from being stripped away. Those organizations have finite resources, but much of their money may have to be funneled into court challenges post-Chevron rather than pursuing policy initiatives or other kinds of litigation, such as citizen suits against individual polluters. Over the next decade or two, we will see a striking down of what were some of our most ambitious regulations. We might see very substantial effects on Americans, but many of those effects will be invisible … We won’t know how much particulate matter is in the air that we’re breathing, for example. The immediate result of Loper Bright will likely not be chaos, but a much more contested, slower-moving and less uniform regulatory state, where major policy decisions are increasingly made by federal judges rather than specialized agency experts.

The current Supreme Court’s 2024 rollback of Chevron sent an unmistakable signal that it will not tolerate deference to agencies and that it has little love for the administrative state. This, coupled with the Trump administration’s desire to destroy the administrative state and to undo government regulations, especially environmental and labor regulations, will result in a major reduction in the overall power of federal agencies to protect American society. Although Loper Bright restricts an administration’s regulatory ability, the Trump administration and its allies are actively finding ways to use it as the basis to repeal or narrow regulations adopted by prior administrations. So far Loper Bright is proving to be an asset for the Trump administration's effort to reduce the number of regulations and the overall reach of the administrative state. SCOTUS and the Trump administration have apparently delivered a significant win for regulated industries. Whether or not it is a win for the average American - in terms of pollution and climate change, health care, Medicare and Medicaid, food safety, taxes and economic inequality, consumer safety, cybersecurity, AI, gun regulations, the economy, data privacy, labor safety and fairness, education, child care, elder care, retirement, civil rights, corporations, the rule of law and etc - is less apparent. Courts must fit within a democracy, not democracies within a judicial system. The US Supreme Court - our most undemocratic institution - seems to have forgotten that.

Then and Now

February is Black History Month.

February is American Heart Month.

   02/01/1790 - In the Royal Exchange Building on New York City’s Broad Street, the US Supreme Court met for the first time, with Chief Justice John Jay of NY presiding.

   02/01/1920 - The Royal Canadian Mounted Police began operations.

   02/01/1960 - Greensboro, NC Sit-In: A group of African American students organized a nonviolent sit-in at a segregated lunch counter in Woolworth's department store in Greensboro. Over the next several days, the number of protesters grew and it captured the attention of the media. The event ignited a sit-in movement throughout the region.

   02/01/2003 - NASA's Columbia exploded over east Texas on reentry.

   02/01/2026 - National Freedom Day: Major Richard Robert Wright Sr, a former slave, fought to have a day when freedom for all Americans is celebrated. When Wright got his freedom, he went on to become a successful businessman and community leader in Philadelphia. Major Wright chose February 1 as National Freedom Day because it was the day in 1865 that President Lincoln signed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.

   02/01/2026 - Imbolc/Oimelc begins this evening and ends tomorrow evening – Wicca, Celtic

   02/01/2026 - Tu Bishvat / New Year of Trees begins at sunset and ends tomorrow evening – Judaism

   02/02/1536 - Pedro de Mendoza of Spain founded Buenos Aires.

   02/02/1653 - New Amsterdam - now New York - was incorporated.

   02/02/1848 - The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican War, was signed.

   02/02/1971 - Idi Amin declared himself the new ruler, President of Uganda, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and Chief of Staff of the Army and Air Force. He established a ruthless military dictatorship that lasted for eight years until he was overthrown in April 1979.

   02/02/2026 - Groundhog Day

   02/02/2026 - Candlemas – Christian

   02/03/1690 - The colony of Massachusetts issued the first paper money in America to pay soldiers fighting in the war against Quebec. The Legislature of the Massachusetts Bay Colony issued 40,000 pounds worth of paper money, or bills of credit. The government promised the notes could later be redeemed for coins.

   02/03/1913 - The US ratified the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, providing for a federal income tax.

   02/03/1959 - A plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, claimed the lives of rock-and-roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and JP "The Big Bopper" Richardson.

   02/03/2005 - Alberto Gonzales won Senate confirmation as the nation’s first Hispanic attorney general despite protests over his record on torture.

   02/03/2026 - Setsubun (Bean Scattering) – Shinto

   02/04/1783 - Britain declared a formal cessation of hostilities with its former colony, the United States of America.

   02/04/1789 - Electors unanimously chose George Washington to be the first US President.

   02/04/1801 - John Marshall became chief justice of the US Supreme Court.

   02/04/1861 - Delegates from six southern states met in Montgomery AL to form the Confederate States of America.

   02/04/1938 - Disney released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, making it the first full-length animated feature film, a huge critical and financial success that cemented Disney's legacy in cinema.

   02/04/1945 - The Yalta Conference: Leaders of the Big Three WWII allies - Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin Roosevelt - met at a Crimean resort at Yalta in Ukraine. Among the issues that were discussed was the fate of Germany after its defeat in the war.

   02/04/1962 - The Soviet Union's news agency Pravda claimed the Russians invented baseball.

   02/04/1974 - Members of the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst was from her apartment in Berkeley CA.

   02/04/2004 - Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg launched The Facebook, a social media website he had built in order to connect Harvard students with one another.

   02/04/2026 - Rosa Parks Day

   02/05/1631 - Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, and his wife arrived in Boston from England.

   02/05/1917 - Congress passed, over President Wilson's veto, an immigration act severely curtailing the influx of Asians.

   02/05/1917 - Mexico adopted its constitution.

   02/05/1937 - President Franklin Roosevelt proposed increasing the number of justices on the Supreme Court. Critics accused Roosevelt of attempting to "pack" the high court.

   02/06/1778 - After receiving the news of the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga, France recognized the pursuit of American independence and signed a treaty of alliance with the Americans.

   02/06/1820 - The first organized immigration of freed enslaved people to Africa from the US departed New York harbor on a journey to Freetown, Sierra Leone, in West Africa.

   02/06/1937 - John Steinbeck’s novella Of Mice and Men, the story of the bond between two migrant workers, was published.

   02/06/1952 - Britain's King George VI died. His daughter, Elizabeth II, succeeded him.

   02/06/1959 - The US successfully test-fired for the first time a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) from Cape Canaveral FL.

   02/06/2001 - Israel elected Ariel Sharon as prime minister in a landslide victory over Ehud Barak.

   02/07/1936 - FDR authorized a flag for the office of the vice president.

   02/07/1940 - Walt Disney's Pinocchio had its world premiere. Disney hired 11 little people dressed as Pinocchio to entertain crowds from the theater's rooftop, but provided them with alcohol, leading to inappropriate behavior, nakedness and police involvement.

   02/07/1964 - The Beatles began their first American tour, arriving in NY.

   02/07/1986 - Haitian President-for-Life Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier fled his country ending 28 years of Duvalier rule.

   02/07/1992 - After suffering through centuries of bloody conflict, the nations of Western Europe finally united in the spirit of economic cooperation with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty of European Union. The treaty called for greater economic integration, common foreign and security policies and cooperation between police and other authorities on crime, terrorism and immigration issues.

   02/08/1922 - President Harding had a radio installed in the White House.

   02/08/1924 - The first execution by gas in the US took place at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City.

   02/08/1943 - The WWII battle of Guadalcanal in the southwest Pacific ended with an American victory over Japanese forces.

   02/08/1978 - Radio broadcast the deliberations of the Senate for the first time as members opened debate on the Panama Canal treaties.

   02/08/2026 - Super Bowl Sunday

   02/09/1825 - The House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams president after no candidate received a majority of the electoral votes.

   02/09/1861 - The Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America elected Jefferson Davis president and Alexander Stephens vice president.

   02/09/1870 - The US Weather Bureau was established.

   02/09/1942 - Daylight saving time instituted.

   02/09/1950 - McCarthyism and the Red Scare: In a speech in WV, Senator Joseph McCarthy (R, WI) claimed he had a list of individuals in the US government who were known communists. His claims of widespread infiltration of communists and communist sympathizers in the US government led to nationwide investigations. McCarthy was ultimately discredited and censured by the US Senate in December, 1954.

   02/09/1964 - The Beatles made their first live American TV appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on CBS.

   02/09/1971 - The Apollo 14 returned to earth after man's third landing on the moon.

   02/09/2023 - A year after its initial invasion, Russian forces began a renewed campaign to capture the entire Donbas region of Ukraine, attacking heavily fortified Ukrainian positions using tens of thousands of new conscripts that were ill-equipped and ill-trained, and incurred heavy casualties.

   02/10/1763 - The Treaty of Paris was signed between Britain, France and Spain marking the end of The French and Indian War. In the treaty, France gave up most of its territory in North America to Britain and Spain. With less colonial competition in the New World, the victory allowed Britain to have a greater influence in North America. This war also was a precursor to the American Revolution.

   02/10/1846 - Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons, began a migration to the west from Illinois.

   02/10/1949 - Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman opened on Broadway. The play was a success on Broadway - winning six Tony Awards including Best Play, Best Director, and Best Author, as well as the Pulitzer Prize.

   02/10/1967 - The 25th Amendment to the Constitution, dealing with presidential disability and succession, was retified.

   02/11/1812 - Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry signed a redistricting law favoring his party ... giving rise to the term "gerrymandering."

   02/11/1945 - FDR, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin signed the Yalta agreement.

   02/11/1979 - Followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power in Iran, overthrowing the Western-backed monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and establishing the Islamic Republic with Khomeini as its supreme religious and political leader, transitioning Iran from a secular state to a Shia theocracy.

   02/11/1983 - Janet Reno became the first female attorney general.

   02/11/1990 - South Africa freed black activist Nelson Mandela after 27 years in captivity.

   02/12/1733 - English colonists led by James Oglethorpe founded Savannah GA.

   02/12/1909 - The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded.

   02/12/1912 - Hsian-T’ung (who later took the name Pu Yi), six years old and the last emperor of China, was forced to abdicate following Sun Yat-sen’s republican revolution. A provisional government was established in his place, ending 267 years of Manchu rule in China and 2,000 years of imperial rule.

   02/12/1915 - The US House of Representatives rejected a proposal to give women the right to vote.

   02/12/1932 - Mrs. Hattie Caraway became the first woman elected to the US Senate.

   02/12/1966 - Adam West premiered as Batman in the US.

   02/12/2026 - Academic Freedom Day (Charles Darwin’s birthday)

   02/13/1633 - Italian philosopher, astronomer and mathematician Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome to face charges of heresy for advocating Copernican theory, which holds that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Galileo officially faced the Roman Inquisition in April of that same year and agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a lighter sentence. Put under house arrest indefinitely by Pope Urban VIII, Galileo spent the rest of his days at his villa in Arcetri, near Florence.

   02/13/1795 - The University of North Carolina became the first US state university to admit students. The first was Hinton James, who was the only student on campus for two weeks.

   02/13/1920 - The League of Nations recognized the perpetual neutrality of Switzerland.

   02/13/1960 - France exploded its first atomic bomb.

   02/14/1778 - The American ship Ranger carried the recently adopted Stars and Stripes to a foreign port for the first time as it arrived in France.

   02/14/1818 - While the year of Frederick Douglass' birth has been narrowed down to two possible candidates, either 1817 or 1818, the actual month and day are still unknown, according to the National Constitution Center. "In his autobiographical writings, Douglass believed he was born in the month of February, and he thought the year was 1818." Ultimately choosing to celebrate his birthday on February 14th, Douglass became the first Black US marshal and was the most photographed American man of the 19th century.

   02/14/1918 - Tarzan of the Apes was released for the first time. It was rumored that there were a number of protests since people reasoned that Tarzan was living in sin with Jane without the benefit of matrimony. (If you’re interested in Tarzan films, I suggest you watch those that starred Johnny Weissmuller. Now he was Tarzan!)

   02/14/1920 - The League of Women Voters was founded in Chicago, by leaders of the women's suffrage movement to help newly enfranchised women become informed voters just months before the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote.

   02/14/1931 - The movie Dracula was released, with Bela Lugosi as the ominous Count. Although there have been numerous screen versions of Bram Stoker's classic tale, none is more enduring than the 1931 original.

   02/14/1989 - Iran's Ayatollah called for the killing of Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses, considered blasphemous by members of the Islamic community. In a fatwa, or religious decree, Khomeini urged "Muslims of the world rapidly to execute the author and the publishers of the book" so that "no one will any longer dare to offend the sacred values of Islam." A $2.8-million bounty was put on the writer's head by the Iran-based 15 Khordad Foundation,

   02/14/2026 - Valentine's Day

   02/15/1564 - Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa.

   02/15/1764 - The city of St Louis was established.

   02/15/1879 - President Hayes signed a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court. In 1872, one Justice had stated that women weren’t fit to argue Supreme Court cases or even to become lawyers.

   02/15/1898 - The US battleship Maine mysteriously blew up in Havana Harbor, killing more than 260 of the 350-plus American crew members aboard and bringing the US closer to war with Spain. Ostensibly on a friendly visit, the Maine had been sent to Cuba to protect the interests of Americans there after a rebellion against Spanish rule broke out in Havana in January.

   02/15/1903 - Toy store owner and inventor Morris Michtom placed two stuffed bears in his shop window, advertising them as Teddy bears. Michtom had earlier petitioned President Theodore Roosevelt for permission to use his nickname, Teddy. The president agreed and, before long, other toy manufacturers began turning out copies of Michtom’s stuffed bears, which soon became a national childhood institution.

   02/15/1950 - Disney released the movie Cinderella, considered one of the best American animated films ever made.

   02/15/1989 - In the last hot conflict of the Cold War, the Soviet Union announced that the last of its troops had left Afghanistan, after more than nine years of military intervention.

   02/15/2026 - Susan B Anthony Day

   02/15/2026 - Parinirvana – Buddhist

   02/15/2026 - Maha Shivaratri (Great Shiva Night) – Hindu

   02/16/1959 - Fidel Castro became premier of Cuba after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista.

   02/16/1968 - Haleyville AL began the first 911 emergency telephone system in the nation.

   02/16/2026 - Presidents Day

   02/17/1801 - The House of Representatives broke an electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, electing Jefferson president and Burr vice president.

   02/17/1817 - Holliday Street in Baltimore, specifically at the corner of North Holliday and East Baltimore Streets, became the first street lit with gas from America's first gas company, Gas Light Company of Baltimore (now BGE).

   02/17/1897 - The forerunner of the National PTA, the National Congress of Mothers, was founded in Washington.

   02/17/1947 - The Voice of America began broadcasting to the Soviet Union. With the words, “Hello! This is New York calling,” the VOA began its first Russian-language broadcasts, explaining that VOA was going to “give listeners in the USSR a picture of life in America.” News stories, human-interest features and music comprised the bulk of the programming. The purpose was to give the Russian audience the “pure and unadulterated truth” about life outside the USSR.

   02/17/1964 - In Wesberry v. Sanders, the Supreme Court ruled that congressional districts within each state had to be roughly equal in population, interpreting the Constitution's "by the People" clause to mean "one person, one vote." The principle was later reinforced by cases like Reynolds v. Sims (1964) for state legislatures, forming the Reapportionment Revolution.

   02/17/2026 - Ramadan begins at sunset and will continue for 30 days through March 19th. – Muslim (The start date may vary since the exact timing depends on when local Islamic authorities around the world declare the sighting of the new moon, the astronomical event that marks the start of the observance.)

   02/17/2026 - Mardi Gras / Carnival / Fat Tuesday / Shrove Tuesday

   02/17/2026 - Chinese New Year, through March 3rd.

   02/18/1861 - The Confederate States of America swore in Jefferson Davis as provisional president.

   02/18/1885 - Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published in the US for the first time.

   02/18/1930 - The ninth planet of our solar system, Pluto, was discovered. In 2006, Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet. It is found in the icy outer edges of our Solar System in what is called the Kuiper Belt. While Pluto is too small to be considered a planet, it is the largest object in the Kuiper Belt.

   02/18/1985 - Jonathan Isaac Horsky Glenn was born in Mansfield OH.

   02/18/2026 - Ash Wednesday, Beginning of Lent – Christian

   02/19/1846 - The Texas state government was formally installed in Austin.

   02/19/1942 - President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, giving the military the authority to relocate and intern Japanese-Americans as well as Japanese nationals living in the US.

   02/19/1945 - The US Marines landed on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima as part of a larger strategy to close in on the mainland of Japan. The operation to capture this island from the Japanese Imperial Army went on for over 5 weeks. In the end, the US had more than 20,000 casualties, including almost 7,000 deaths. Approximately 18,000 Japanese soldiers were killed.

   02/19/1963 - The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan, was published. It is considered one of the most influential non-fiction books of the 20th century, and was a major inspiration for the modern feminist movement in the US. The book identified a "problem that has no name," the widespread discontent and frustration of American women in the 1950s and early 1960s due to society's limiting expectations rooted in traditional gender roles.

   02/20/1792 - President Washington signed an act creating the US Post Office.

   02/20/1809 - In US v. Peters, the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice John Marshall, established federal supremacy by ruling that state legislatures cannot overturn federal court judgments, affirming federal judicial power over state actions, a key step in solidifying the Supremacy Clause and defining federal-state balance.

   02/20/1839 - Congress prohibited dueling in the District of Columbia.

   02/20/1962 - Astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth, flying aboard Friendship Seven.

   02/21/1848 - The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx with the assistance of Friedrich Engels, was published in London by a group of German-born revolutionary socialists known as the Communist League. The political pamphlet, arguably the most influential in history, proclaimed that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” and that the inevitable victory of the proletariat, or working class, would put an end to class society forever.

   02/21/1878 - The first telephone directory was issued. It was a single page published in New Haven CT by the New Haven District Telephone Company, listing 50 local businesses and residents. It lacked phone numbers because operators manually connected calls, and it served as a basic guide, eventually evolving into the familiar, multi-page phone books with numbers, white pages and advertisements

   02/21/1925 - The New Yorker - a successful center-left American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry - was founded by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for The New York Times. The publication is known for its in-depth journalism and iconic magazine covers.

   02/21/1965 - Religious and civil rights leader Malcolm X was shot to death in NYC by three gunmen who were members of the Nation of Islam. He was 39 years old.

   02/21/1972 - President Nixon began his historic visit to China.

   02/22/1819 - Spain ceded Florida to the US.

   02/22/1879 - Frank Woolworth opened a 5-cent store in Utica NY. It closed after two months.

   02/22/1924 - Calvin Coolidge broadcast the first presidential radio address to the American public. It was carried on five stations, with an estimated five million listeners. Coolidge later helped create the Federal Radio Commission, precursor of the Federal Communications Commission.

   02/22/1935 - It became illegal for airplanes to fly over the White House.

   02/22/1980 - The US Olympic hockey team upset the Soviets 4-3 and went on to win the gold medal.

   02/23/1836 - The siege of the Alamo began in San Antonio.

   02/23/1945 - US Marines on Iwo Jima captured Mount Suribachi where five Marines and a Navy corpsman raised the American flag, captured in the world-famous photo by Joe Rosenthal.

   02/23/1997 - Scientists in Scotland announced they had succeeded in cloning an adult sheep producing a lamb named Dolly.

   02/24/1868 - The House of Representatives impeached President Andrew Johnson following his attempted dismissal of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. The Senate acquitted him.

   02/24/1903 - The US signed an agreement acquiring a naval station at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

   02/24/1920 - A fledgling German political party - the Nazi Party - held its first meeting in Munich. Its chief spokesman was Adolf Hitler.

   02/24/1942 - The Voice of America went on the air for the first time.

   02/24/1980 - The US hockey team defeated Finland, 4-2, to clinch the gold medal at the Winter Olympic Games.

   02/24/2022 - In an early morning address on Russian state television, Vladimir Putin announced Russian forces would carry out “a special military operation” in Ukraine. Within hours, Russian missiles rained down across Ukraine and Russian forces invaded from the north, east and south. Ukraine put up fierce resistance … and got its first rallying cry when a group of 13 border guards on tiny Snake Island were told by a Russian warship to surrender. "Russian warship, go f--- yourself," the guards responded.

   02/24/2026 - President’s State of the Union Address to Congress: This is a significant event in the US political calendar, as it marks the President's annual address to Congress and the nation. The address will be delivered from the House Chamber of the US Capitol Building. The President will outline the administration's achievements and plans for the upcoming year, including topics such as the economy, healthcare, national security and foreign policy. The President's speech will be followed by a response from a Congressman of the opposing party.

   02/25/1570 - Pope Pius V excommunicated England's Queen Elizabeth I.

   02/25/1793 - The department heads of the US government met with President Washington in the first Cabinet meeting.

   02/25/1836 - Inventor Samuel Colt patented his revolver.

   02/25/1964 - Young Muhammad Ali knocked out Sonny Liston for his first world title.

   02/25/2026 - National Adjunct Walkout/Action Day (#NAWD) ... Adjuncts are often referred to as the Wal-Mart workers of academia (although let the record show that Wal-Mart, at least, is raising its employees’ wages).

   02/25/2026 - Norriture Rituelle des sources têt d' l'eau – Vodún

   02/26/1919 - Congress established Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.

   02/26/1940 - The US Air Defense Command was created, eventually becoming the modern North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) with Canada.

   02/26/1952 - Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced that Britain had developed its own atomic bomb.

   02/26/1993 - A bomb built by a group of Islamic extremists exploded in the parking garage of NY's World Trade Center, killing 6 people and injuring more than 1,000 others.

   02/27/1801 - The District of Columbia was placed under the jurisdiction of Congress.

   02/27/1922 - In Leser v. Garnett, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the 19th Amendment to the Constitution that guaranteed the right of women to vote, dismissing challenges that questioned its validity and affirming women's right to vote by rejecting claims that it infringed on state powers or had flawed ratification processes, solidifying a crucial victory for suffrage despite continued discrimination faced by women of color.

   02/27/1951 - The US ratified 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, limiting a president to two terms of office.

   02/28/1827 - The first US railroad chartered to carry passengers and freight, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, was incorporated.

   02/28/1854 - Around 50 people opposed to slavery met at a schoolhouse in Ripon WI, to call for a new political organization. The group would later take the name of the Republican Party.

   02/28/1953 - Scientists James Watson and Francis Crick were credited with discovering the double-helix structure of DNA. Rosalind Franklin might disagree.

   02/28/1993 - Branch Davidian Standoff: Local and national law enforcement arrived at the Branch Davidian compound at Mt. Carmel, just outside of Waco TX, with a warrant to search the facility for illegal weapons. Upon their arrival, they engaged in a firefight with the Branch Davidians. 76 people inside the compound were killed, including the group's leader, David Koresh. Several law enforcement officers also died and others were injured.

   02/29/1504 - Christopher Columbus, stranded in Jamaica during his fourth voyage to the West, used a correctly predicted lunar eclipse to frighten hostile natives into providing food for his crew.

Online Resource Links

   How Wobbly Is Our Democracy? | The American Abyss | US is polarizing faster than other democracies. | The Ballad of Downward Mobility | A Crisis Coming … The Twin Threats To American Democracy: (1) A Growing Movement to Refuse to Accept Defeat in an Election and (2) Policy and Election Results that Are Increasingly Less Connected to What the Public Wants | America’s Surprising Partisan Divide on Life Expectancy | ‘Freedom’ Means Something Different to Liberals and Conservatives. Here’s How the Definition Split - and Why That Still Matters.| Politics is personal. | For elites, politics is driven by ideology. For voters, it’s not. | Trust and Distrust in America | One America is thriving; the other is stagnating. How long can this go on? | America Is Growing Apart, Possibly for Good - The great “convergence” of the mid-20th century may have been an anomaly. | Are we really facing a second Civil War? | How ‘Stop the Steal’ Captured the American Right | Conspiracy theorists want to run America’s elections. These are the candidates standing in their way. | Two Americas Index: Democracy deniers | Where will this political violence lead? Look to the 1850s. | American Democracy Was Never Designed to Be Democratic | Yes, the economy is important, but we found that election subversion attempts appear to matter more to voters than polling suggests. | Donald Trump’s 2024 Campaign, in His Own Menacing Words | A Warning | We Are in a Five-Alarm Fire for Democracy | According to Freedom House, the US, whose aggregate score for political rights and civil liberties fell 11 points between 2010 and 2020, now falls near the middle of the free spectrum, behind Slovenia, Croatia and Mongolia. | The Looming Contest Between Two Presidents and Two Americas | Why Losing Political Power Now Feels Like ‘Losing Your Country’ | Here Is One Way to Steal the Presidential Election | In tense election year, state officials face climate of intimidation. | In the GOP’s new surveillance state, everyone’s a snitch. | Political scientists want to know why we hate one another this much. | How Civil Wars Start: Three factors come into play, and the US demonstrates all of them. | Political violence may be un-American, but it is not uncommon. | The Political Violence Spilling Out of Red States | A powerful Christian conservative legal group is quietly reshaping America through the courts. Here’s what it’s after. | In Texas and elsewhere, new laws and policies have encouraged neighbors to report neighbors to the government. | An honest assessment of rural white resentment is long overdue. | This is the unspoken promise of Trump’s return. | American Democracy in its Final Death Throes | Mandate for Leadership (Project 2025) | Project 2025: Summary and Chapter Breakdown | Are we sleepwalking into autocracy? | How to Destroy What Makes America Great | Trump Just Bet the Farm | The question of the day is whether the US is embroiled in a constitutional crisis. | Are We Losing our Democracy: 12 Markers of Democratic Erosion | Support for political violence is not as high as it may seem. | How the Billionaires Took Over | A majority of Americans understand just how unequally wealth is distributed in the country and they’re not happy about it. | Justice Sotomayor is trying to warn us about the Supreme Court’s dirtiest open secret. | The 2025 State of the Nation Project provides an overall assessment of how the US is doing on a wide range of factors that the American people believe are important.

   At The Brink: A Series about the Threat of Nuclear Weapons in an Unstable World | The Brink: If it seems alarmist to anticipate the horrifying aftermath of a nuclear attack, consider this: The US and Ukraine governments have been planning for the scenario for at least two years. The possibility of a nuclear strike, once inconceivable in modern conflict, is more likely now than at any other time since the Cold War. | A nuclear weapon strikes. What happens next? (8:10) | 72 Minutes Until the End of the World? | The Doomsday Clock 2024: It’s 90 seconds to midnight. The Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has left the hands of the Doomsday Clock unchanged due to ominous trends that continue to point the world toward global catastrophe. (Founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer and University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock two years later, using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the planet. The Doomsday Clock is set every year by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes nine Nobel laureates. The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to global catastrophe caused by man-made technologies.) | The Toll: The Threat of Nuclear Weapons in an Unstable World | Proud Prophet: The Secret Pentagon Nuclear War Game That ​Offers a Stark​ Warning for Our Times | Overmatched: Why the US Military Needs to Reinvent Itself

   Visualizing the State of Global Debt, by Country: The debt-to-GDP ratio is a simple metric that compares a country’s public debt to its economic output. By comparing how much a country owes and how much it produces in a year, economists can measure a country’s theoretical ability to pay off its debt. The World Bank published a study showing that countries that maintained a debt-to-GDP ratio of over 77% for prolonged periods of time experienced economic slowdowns.

   What ISIS Really Wants: The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy and for how to stop it  |  ISIS Claims Responsibility, Calling Paris Attacks First of the Storm  |  Syria Iraq: The Islamic State Militant Group  |  Isis: The Inside Story  |  Frontline: The Rise of ISIS  |  Council on Foreign Relations: A Primer on ISIS  |  Cracks in ISIS Are Becoming More Clear  |  How ISIS’ Attacks Harm the Middle East |  Timeline: the Rise, Spread and Fall of the Islamic State

   Keeping the Shi'ites Straight Based on the opinion that no story has been more confusing for the Western news media to cover in postwar Iraq than the politics of the country's Shi'ite majority, this article provides a basic outline of Shi'ite religious history. Discusses the Sadr family (Muhammad Baqir as-Sadr, Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, and Muqtada as-Sadr), Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim and other figures.

   What it’s like to live on $2 a day in the United States (PDF)

   Check out Today's Front Pages. Each day, you can see the front pages of more than 800 newspapers from around the world in their original, unedited form.

   PBS's 30 Second Candidate allows you to view more political ads than you ever knew existed. Choose the Historical Timeline link to see how political ads have changed over the years. Start with the infamous Daisy Ad that Lyndon Johnson used against Barry Goldwater. Click on Watch Johnson ads. Then click on either the QuickTime link or the Real Video link next to Daisy.

   Check out the Political Compass. The site does a good job of explaining political ideologies (although with definitions different from those I use) and gives you a chance to discover your own political philosophy.

   Law Library of Congress: North Korea: Collection of links to websites on North Korean government, politics and law. Includes legal guides, country studies and links to constitutions and branches of government (where available). Council on Foreign Relations: North Korea: Background, articles and opinion pieces about North Korea government and politics. Many of the articles focus on North Korea's nuclear program. From the Council on Foreign Relations, "an independent membership organization and a nonpartisan think tank and publisher."

   State of the Union (SOTU): The site uses an interactive timeline to provide a visual representation of prominent words in presidential State of the Union addresses by displaying significant words as "determined by comparing how frequently the word occurs in the document to how frequently it appears throughout the entire body of SOTU addresses." The Appendices section describes the statistical methods used. Also includes the full text of addresses.

   Small Town Papers: This site provides access to scanned images of recent issues of dozens of small town newspapers from throughout the United States. Newspapers are updated periodically, 2-3 weeks after publication. The site also includes a searchable archive (of articles, photos and advertisements), which covers different periods for each paper, some as far back as the 1890s. Access to the archives requires free registration.

   This website serves as a centralized location to learn about the Congressional Research Service and search for CRS reports that have been released to the public by members of Congress. (CRS Reports do not become public until a member of Congress releases the report.) Features a searchable database with more than 8,000 reports, a list of recently released reports, other collections of CRS reports and a FAQ about CRS.

   Stem Cell Research: See the official NIH resource for Stem Cell Research. In 2005, NOVA aired an overview of The Stem Cell Issue.

  Instances of the Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798 - 2020: This report lists hundreds of instances in which the United States has used its armed forces abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict or for other than normal peacetime purposes. It was compiled in part from various older lists and is intended primarily to provide a rough survey of past US military ventures abroad, without reference to the magnitude of the given instance noted. | Here's How Bad a Nuclear War Would Actually Be | This is What It’s Like to Witness a Nuclear Explosion

   Government Product Recalls

   Homeland Security Knowledge Base

  If you're worried about retirement, try some of these sites: IRS Tax Information for Retirement Plans | Social Security Retirement Planner | Retirement Planning Resources from Smart Money

   This commercial site presents brief information about dozens of Black Inventors from the United States. Some entries include portraits and images. Also includes a searchable timeline covering 1721-1988. Does not include bibliographic information.

  Annenberg Political Fact Check: This site describes itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit, consumer advocate for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in US politics. The site provides original articles, with summaries and sources, analyzing factual accuracy in TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases. Searchable. From the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

   The State of State and Local Finances: New studies afford a state-by-state or city-by-city analysis of fiscal well being. The Year of Living Dangerously: While leaders in a growing number of states appear to believe they're serving the public good by squeezing government dry, there's little question that minimizing management carries a host of dangers that directly affect the lives of citizens.

   First Amendment Library: Provides info on Supreme Court First Amendment jurisprudence,  including rulings, arguments, briefs, historical material, commentary and press coverage.

Community Service

If you need a presentation or workshop for your group,

use this Community link or the link at the top of the page.
The link will take you to a list of the topics I currently have available.
To schedule a date or for more information, feel free to contact me at dramyglenn@gmail.com