(Seriously, go read this. You’ll get great laughs, and the oxygen will be so good for the brain! -A)
Snippet:
Amanda: Does she have to pee?
Claudia: Yes! Also, his left pant leg is missing?
Sarah: Why is the perspective weird? Their legs look so short and their heads are so large?
Okay taking another look, I think the angle of her hip looks too low.
So it looks like her legs are short and her midsection is bizarro long, and her head is sized correctly, just looks out of whack with the leg. (snip-I cannot overstate the gold: go read it! And no drinks over your keyboard… )
Cosmos: Cosmos is a quarterly science magazine. We aim to inspire curiosity in ‘The Science of Everything’ and make the world of science accessible to everyone.
Supernova remnant G278.94+1.35, dubbed ‘Diprotodon’, captured by CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope. Credit: Sanja Lazarević
Supernova remnants are some of the most visually impressive objects in space. Astronomer Kovi Rose offers us a unique window into these violent and powerful celestial events.
Something explosive always seems to be happening in space. We often see headlines in the news about dramatic events like a flaring star, a gravitational wave from colliding neutron stars, or the latest supernova erupting in a galaxy far, far away.
The stories normally tend to focus on the peak periods of these energetic events, which generate in a week roughly a trillion-trillion times as much energy as we generated on Earth last year. But what remains after a star’s collapse – a supernova remnant, as astronomers call it – is both spectacular and scientifically interesting.
Supernova remnant G295.5+09.7 captured by the ASKAP radio telescope at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, CSIRO’s Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory. Cloud-like ripples and filaments of interstellar gases are illuminated along the boundaries of the supernova remnant. Credit: ASKAP Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) Team & Kovi Rose
The end of a star
Stars are endlessly collapsing under gravity. This immense pressure drives a fusion reaction, where hydrogen particles join together into heavier elements. The energy produced by this fusion reaction pushes outwards, stopping the star from collapsing in on itself. However, when a star starts to run out of fuel for its fusion engine, the balance breaks down and things get interesting.
For stars roughly the size of our Sun, there is no big explosion as they reach their final years. Instead, when they run out of fuel, they gently shrink into a glowing lump of carbon and oxygen called a white dwarf. White dwarfs don’t collapse entirely under the force of gravity, because the electrons in the remaining atoms are strong enough to push back. This is thanks to a quirky quantum effect called electron pressure.
A white dwarf can produce a supernova, but only under very specific circumstances, when the white dwarf is orbiting another star. When a white dwarf gets too close to the other star – which could even be another white dwarf – its gravitational influence will start to pull in material from the other star. This breaks the balance between gravity and those simmering electrons, ultimately causing the white dwarf to explode!
Bigger stars do end their lives in a supernova, and usually without any outside help. These stars – with more than 8 times the mass of our Sun – live fast and die young. They burn through their nuclear fuel faster than their smaller cousins, with lifetimes of millions (not billions) of years. These stars start by fusing hydrogen into helium in the core. As that runs out, they start fusing helium atoms together instead. And so it continues up the periodic table. The heavier the element, the faster the star runs out of fuel – with carbon and oxygen burning for mere years and months, respectively. But this can’t go on forever.
Once the core is made of iron, the fusion process grinds to a halt. With no new energy keeping the star inflated, its layers suddenly collapse. The rush of material inwards hits the remaining iron core and produces a shockwave that moves outwards at speeds nearing a quarter of the speed of light. These aptly named core-collapse supernovae usually leave their densely packed remains behind in the form of a neutron star – or, depending on how massive they were, a black hole.
Tuning the radio
For both classes of supernova, the stellar matter from the explosion is launched out across space at thousands, or even tens of thousands, of kilometres per second. Moving at these speeds, the leading front of the supernova can take tens of thousands of years to slow down, usually after spreading out across several light-years of space (one light-year is about 9.5 trillion kilometres) and sweeping up any additional material they encounter along the way. This is a supernova remnant: an interstellar bubble created by the wake of one of nature’s most energetic explosions.
This powerful blast wave contains fast-moving electrons that interact with nearby material in a fascinating way. The space around a supernova is filled with magnetised matter, and because of the special relationship between electricity and magnetism, the electrons curve rather than flying straight. As their paths change, the electrons are forced to slow down. Some of their energy is converted into light – but not always as light our eyes can see.
Supernova remnant SN1006 captured by CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope. SN1006 is the remnant of a supernova that was observed in the year 1006 by astronomers all over the world, from Egypt to China. It was first recognised as a supernova remnant in 1965, following radio observations at Murriyang (the Parkes radio telescope). Credit: Dr Emil Lenc & Kovi Rose.
Visible light is just one window into the full spectrum of electromagnetic waves. It has a short wavelength of a few hundred nanometres; for context, the average width of a single human hair is nearly 100,000 nanometres. Most of the light in supernova ‘bubbles’ has much less energy, with a wavelength of tens of centimetres or even metres. This particular type of light is called radio.
Radio astronomers have built just the right instruments to detect this kind of light emitted by supernovae. From the initial blast to the giant bubble-like structures they create as the explosion moves out through space, radio telescopes can detect these explosive supernova ‘bubbles’ expanding and eventually slowing down as they become a remnant.
We also see the brightness and energy of the light changing depending on how much material the shockwave sweeps up as it expands, or how strongly magnetised the surrounding material is. By studying the radio light generated by supernova remnants, we can learn when and how they formed, as well as what kind of dense objects the explosion left behind.
Australia’s view
Radio astronomy has a long, continuous history in Australia. We were one of the first countries in the world to use radio instruments to study celestial objects. The American radio engineer Karl Jansky, widely considered the founder of radio astronomy, first detected radio emission in 1933 from a dense region somewhere in the Milky Way. However, in 1954, CSIRO astronomers in Sydney figured out that the source of Jansky’s detection was located right at the centre of our galaxy.
As the field of radio astronomy developed, astronomers and engineers began exploring different types of telescopes that could be used to study a range of objects in the sky. Depending on the design of the instrument, we can use them to detect point-like radio sources – like the centres of distant galaxies – or diffuse clouds and filaments, like the boundaries of a supernova remnant. And using advanced image-processing techniques and modern telescopes like CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope, we can create images that show the beauty of the radio sky at both small and large scales.
This 24-metre-wide ‘hole-in-the-ground’, originally dug out by a few radio astronomers during their lunch breaks, was used to locate Sagittarius A. At the time it was the second-largest radio telescope in the world. Credit: CSIROCSIRO’s ASKAP is a telescope made of 36 smaller (12-metre) dish-like antennas spread over a large area on Wajarri Yamaji Country in Western Australia. Credit: Laura Driessen
Exploring our galaxy
Supernova remnants are stunning markers of the explosive history of our galaxy. And luckily for astronomers, we’ve already discovered hundreds of them. Observations of that white road of stars that runs across the sky, the Milky Way, have revealed a foamy sea of interstellar bubbles created by ancient supernovae.
The shapes of supernova remnants reflect the circumstances of their formation and their encounters with neighbouring objects, including cosmic clouds of gas and dust. Some appear symmetrical, while others take on distorted forms, moulded by interactions with nearby material or overlapping with other expanding bubbles. In fact, our whole solar system sits near the centre of a ‘superbubble’ – a vast cavity containing most of the stars visible to the naked eye. Scientists reckon the superbubble was carved out by the cumulative explosions of multiple supernovae over millions of years.
Radio astronomers estimate that as many as 1,500 supernova remnants may be still hiding in our galaxy undiscovered. New observations with highly sensitive radio instruments like ASKAP and the upcoming SKA telescopes will help us uncover these elusive interstellar bubbles, and reveal more details about the energetic processes that shaped the Milky Way.
The central band of the Milky Way seen at radio wavelengths. This image combines observations from the Parkes and ASKAP radio telescopes to reveal the network of supernova remnants and gas clouds in the central region of our galaxy. Credit: R Kothes (NRC) and the PEGASUS team.
Kovi Rose is an astrophysics PhD candidate at the University of Sydney who studies the radio light from nearby dwarf stars and distant supernovae.
August 11, 1894 Federal troops forced some 1,200 jobless workers across the Potomac River and out of Washington, D.C. Jack London Led by an unemployed activist, “General” Charles “Hobo” Kelly, the jobless group’s “soldiers” included young journalist Jack London, known for writing about social issues, and miner/cowboy William ”Big Bill” Haywood who later organized western miners and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). “Big Bill” Haywood Read about “Big Bill”
August 11, 1958 A drugstore chain in Wichita, Kansas, agreed to serve all its customers after weeks of sit-ins at Dockum’s lunch counter by local African-Americans who wanted an end to segregation. On this day, as several black Wichitans were sitting at the counter even though the store refused to serve them, a white man around 40 walked in and looked at them for several minutes. Then he looked at the store manager and said, simply, “Serve them. I’m losing too much money.” He was the owner, Robert Dockum. That day the lawyer for the local NAACP branch called the company and was told by the a vice president ”he had instructed all of his managers, clerks, etc., to serve all people without regard to race, creed or color,” statewide. This was the first success of the sit-in movement which soon spread to Oklahoma City and other towns in Kansas, but is often thought to have started in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960.
August 11, 1984 Prior to his weekly radio address, unaware that the microphone was open and he was broadcasting, President Ronald Reagan joked, “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” Many Americans and others throughout the world were concerned about the President’s apparently flippant attitude towards nuclear war at a time of increasing tension between the two major nuclear powers. Among other things, the U.S. had begun a major strategic arms buildup, adding many thousands of additional nuclear warheads along with a broad range of new delivery systems: long-range bombers including 100 B-1B stealth bombers and MX (10-warhead) ICBMs, considered first-strike weapons; intermediate-range missiles to be deployed in Europe; 3000 cruise missiles; and Trident nuclear submarines with sea-launched cruise missiles. Additionally, Reagan had proposed building the space-based Strategic Defense Initiative of anti-ballistic missiles, a destabilizing influence on the nuclear balance. The Nuclear Arms Control Legacy of Ronald Reagan
This week, as I noted last night when I wrote to you, a lot was going on. Really, too much, which seems to be a definite feature and not a bug of this second Trump administration. They don’t want us to be able to take in everything that’s going on. So I’m starting a Sunday morning wrap-up feature to help you keep up with anything you may have missed during the week.
I’m going to cheat by a day and start with the column from Saturday, August 2nd, It’s 1984, which is the perfect lead in for starting the conversation about our Book Club book, George Orwell’s 1984, now that we’ve had some time to start reading. If you haven’t started, we’ll have a Substack Live discussion about it later this week, so now is a great time to get started. In the column, following Trump’s firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner Ericka McEntarfer because he didn’t like the jobs numbers, I wrote, “In the novel 1984, facts are not a barrier. Rewriting history is a central tenet of the totalitarian regime, carried out by the Ministry of Truth.” We need to take note as this becomes a feature of the Trump administration. We live in a post-truth society now.
In The Week Ahead last Sunday, we kicked off a conversation about the Voting Rights Act, which had its 60th anniversary last week. The irony of the Supreme Court’s announcement late on the Friday night ahead of that anniversary, that it would hear a case with an issue designed to gut much of what remains of it, was far too measured to be coincidence. Here’s your essential refresher on the Act, and the way the Supreme Court has eroded it. Most importantly, this is not hopeless! Electing majorities in the Senate and the House at the midterms would almost certainly make restoring the Act, which the Supreme Court invited Congress to do, a top priority. We took that issue up in conversations later in the week, which you’ll want to see if you missed them during the week.
On Monday, Marc Elias and I discussed the Voting Rights Act. There is no sugar coating here, but realism about where we are, and also what the path forward could look like if we don’t give up.
There’s no nice way to put it. I’m heartsick about what’s happening at DOJ and the FBI. Discussed in this post, Desecrating DOJ. Pam Bondi is proving to be exactly the Attorney General we expected—someone with loyalty to Donald Trump instead of to the Constitution. But even here, there are guardrails—even if DOJ tries to indict its revenge cases, grand juries may refuse to go along. If they indict, trial judges and juries must be persuaded of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Make sure you read this piece to the end, because part of Trump’s shtick is persuading people to give up because he’s already won, already taken the system apart, and he has not. There is still some play in the joints, and every reason for us to persist.
We had no chicken pictures this week, but the Turkeys that were roaming around in the woods while I finished proofreading my book were pretty engaging. I appreciated all the people who wrote to tell me this was a pack of males roaming around in the pre-mating season. The things you can learn here at Civil Discourse!
If you missed my conversation with Alabama Congressman Shomari Figures, do yourself a favor and go listen now. Shomari was elected out of Alabama 2, the new district created last term after the Supreme Court ruled Alabama’s legislature engaged in racial discrimination when it drew new maps after the decennial census and ordered them redrawn. I’m a little biased here, Shomari was my Obama-era colleague working on criminal justice reform and other issues, and his parents are civil rights icons in Alabama, but he makes you feel proud to be a Democrat. This is a conversation filled with hope but tempered with realism. Shomari is part of the new generation of leaders we need.
This week’s Five Questions column featured Maine’s Secretary of State (and gubernatorial candidate) Shenna Bellows, who recently told the administration to “Go Jump in the Gulf of Maine,” when it asked her to give them information on Maine’s voters. This is someone who knows what it takes to run an election, but in addition to being smart, she also reminds us that elections are about us and about grassroots American patriotism. We’ll follow up with a Substack Live with her soon.
Finally, last night’s, A Tough Week for the Rule of Law, catches us up on more of the difficult legal news from last week. “In order to resist what Trump is doing in our country, you need to be informed; you need to know what’s at stake.” It can be awfully tempting to look away right now, but don’t. This is our generation’s fight for democracy, and this week confirmed my sense that I landed on the right title for my book, when I called it “Giving Up is Unforgivable.” Get mad. Get angry. Feel the sadness of the moment. But don’t give up.
I hope you’ll use the week’s posts to stay up to speed and that you’ll share them widely—it’s going to take every last one of us to reset guardrails in Congress in the 2026 election. There will be nothing more important, and the time to start educating people around you is now. Thanks for being here with me at Civil Discourse, as we take on the challenges ahead!
Still grifting after all these years by Ann Telnaes
Trump and his spawn continue making money off the presidency Read on Substack
The Guardian is reporting that World Liberty Financial, co-founded by Don Jr. and Eric Trump, has made the president and his family 500 million dollars so far.
The FBI is now officially politicized. There are reports that Director Kash Patel, who’s not just a joke as director of the FBI (an organization he once said should be destroyed), but also as a human being, has assigned 1,000 agents to comb through the Epstein Files to flag mentions of Donald Trump. Now, he’s sending FBI agents after Texas state Democratic senators who’ve fled to other states so Republicans can’t build a quorum to vote on gerrymandering.
Trump told Texas that he deserves five more congressional seats, just like the time he told Georgia officials that he deserved 11,781 more votes in the 2020 presidential election.
What’s the FBI going to do when it finds a Texas Democrat? They don’t have any more authority than Cartman (respect my authoritah!) to apprehend, arrest, or detain a state senator avoiding a vote. The Democrats haven’t broken any laws. So, for anyone who says the redistricting in Texas isn’t illegal, then neither is avoiding a vote on it. This special session was called to deal with the flood, not to cheat and disenfranchise the voters. It should be illegal to abuse the FBI this way. It should also be illegal to gerrymander to prevent minorities from voting. Oh, wait. IT IS!
And poor Big Balls got beat up by a teenage girl. Edward Coristine, a former DOGE official, was attacked in Washington, DC. Trump and others claim a gang was trying to carjack him. Others claimed a woman was being carjacked, but Big Balls rushed in to save her and got himself attacked for his heroism. My cockles are warming up already. Such a hero…but wait!
Now it turns out, he may have been with the woman already, and his attackers were less of a gang and more like a couple of kids on bicycles. A report from Fox 5 said they attacked Big Balls until cops stepped in. Why are kids attacking a man in front of cops? There’s a lot of this story that does not add up. First up, how do we know Big Balls literally has big balls?
The report says they’re looking for a third guy, and he’s the right skin color for MAGA outrage. (snip-MORE)
August 10, 1883 Adrian “Cap” Anson refused to field his visiting Chicago White Stockings team in an exhibition baseball game if the Toledo Mud Hens included star catcher Moses Fleetwood Walker in their lineup. Chicago’s Captain Anson, who grew up in slaveholding Iowa, said he wouldn’t share the diamond with a non-white player. After more than an hour’s delay, Charlie Morton, the Toledo manager, insisted that if Chicago forfeited the game, it would also lose its share of the gate receipts; Anson relented. Moses Fleetwood Walker Morton had not planned to have Walker catch due to injury, but insisted on putting him in at centerfield, despite Cap Anson’s objections.
August 10, 1948 Gay rights activist Harry Hay organized what later became the Mattachine Society (originally ~ Foundation), a groundbreaking 1950s gay rights organization. The group was named after the Mattachines, a medieval troupe of men who went village-to-village advocating social justice. Mattachine: Radical Roots of Gay Liberation
August 10, 1984 Two Plowshares activists, Barb Katt and John LaForge, damaged a guidance system for a Trident submarine with hammers at a Sperry plant in Minnesota. In sentencing them to six months’ probation, U.S. District Judge Miles W. Lord commented, “Why do we condemn and hang individual killers, while extolling the virtues of warmongers?” Barb Katt More on the Sperry Software Pair More plowshares actions
August 10, 1988 President George H.W. Bush signed legislation apologizing and compensating for the World War II internment of Japanese Americans. President Franklin Roosevelt had authorized the round-up of hundreds of thousands of Americans of Japanese ancestry, some of whom were American citizens, as security risks. Most lost all their property and were moved to relocation camps for the duration of the war (though not in Hawaii, then not yet a state, where public opposition would not allow it).
August 10, 1993 Ruth Bader Ginsburg is sworn in as the second woman and 107th Justice to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
August 10, 2005 Mehmet Tarhan was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment on two charges of “insubordination before command” and “insubordination before command for trying to escape from military service” because he refused to serve in the Turkish Army. He would not sign any paper, put on a uniform, nor allow his hair and beard to be cut. He went on two extended hunger strikes to protest his arrest and abuse while in Sivas Military Prison. War Resisters International has supported his efforts throughout his ordeal. He was released unexpectedly from prison after one year. Read more
I had a Beagle years ago, Chubbs, and he was a character. For example, one day I came home and he was on the roof.
Why was the dog on the roof? It’s something you don’t see every day. Chubbs was on the roof because he was roof pooping. Yes, the dog was crapping on the roof. But I figured out that he made it to the roof by jumping from a balcony. My sister was home, and she figured she could leave the second-floor balcony door open because it was on the second floor. But the reason you ask, “Why is the dog on the roof?” because he doesn’t belong there.
When you see Donald Trump on the roof of the White House, you have to ask, “Why is the president (sic) of the United States on the roof of the White House. When reporters discovered he was there, one shouted the question, “Sir, why are you on the roof?” And then, in idiotic Trump fashion, he conducted a press conference from the roof, shouting down answers to reporters.
Stephen Colbert asked on his canceled show, “That’s not a question you hear asked for a world leader that often.” He said, “It’s right up there with ‘Your Majesty, where are your pants?”
This is like when grandpa gets lost and ends up on the roof. How he got up there is a mystery, but you still have to call the fire department to get him down. But do you really? Couldn’t we have just left Trump on the roof? We could just toss him a Big Mac now and then, and he should be OK. Right?
Colbert asked rhetorically, “What does any of this mean? How are you the guy in charge? Why do we have to pretend? Why do we have to pretend it’s normal when an old man wanders around a roof and shouts at us?”
I wonder if Trump gets that question every time he meets a foreign leader. How are you the guy in charge?
This is not normal, and it’s not just the roof thing. How did a stupid grifting carnival barker end up in the White House….TWICE? And the reason Trump was on the roof isn’t normal either. (snip-MORE, and it’s great)
August 9, 1943 Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian conscientious objector who reported for induction but refused to serve in the army of the Third Reich, was executed by guillotine at Brandenburg-Gorden prison. An American, Gordon Zahn, wrote about Jägerstätter while researching the subject of German Roman Catholics’ response to Hitler. Zahn’s book, In Solitary Witness, influenced Daniel Ellsberg’s decision to stand against the Vietnam War by bringing the previously secret Pentagon Papers to public attention. Against the Stream by Erna Putz, the story of the courage of Franz Jägerstätter
August 9, 1945 The second atomic bomb, “Fatman,” was dropped on the arms-manufacturing and key port city of Nagasaki. The plan to drop a second bomb was to test a different design rather than one of military necessity. The Hiroshima weapon was a gun type, the Nagasaki weapon an implosion type, and the War Department wanted to know which was the more effective design. Responsibility for the timing of the second bombing had been delegated by President Harry Truman before the Hiroshima attack to Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, the commander of the 509th Composite Group on Tinian, one of the Northern Mariana Islands in the western Pacific. Scheduled for August 11 against Kokura, the raid was moved forward to avoid a five-day period of bad weather forecast to begin on August 10. English translation of leaflet air-dropped over Japan after the first bomb [excerpt]:“We are in possession of the most destructive explosive ever devised by man. A single one of our newly developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2000 of our giant B-29s can carry on a single mission. This awful fact is one for you to ponder and we solemnly assure you it is grimly accurate.” Of the 195,00 population of the city (many of its children had been evacuated due to bombing in the days just prior), 39,000 died and 25,000 were injured, and 40% of all residences were damaged or destroyed.“ What on earth has happened?” said my mother, holding her baby tightly in her arms. “Is it the end of the world?” Hear an eyewitness account of this terrrible event Photographic exhibit of the aftermath
August 9, 1956 20,000 women demonstrated against the pass laws in Pretoria, South Africa. Pass laws required that Africans carry identity documents with them at all times. These books had to contain stamps providing official proof the person in question had permission to be in a particular town at a given time. Initially, only men were forced to carry these books, but soon the law also compelled women to carry the documents.
August 9, 1966 Two hundred people sat in at the New York City offices of Dow Chemical Company to protest the widespread use in Vietnam of Dow’s flammable defoliant Napalm . Napalm in use in Vietnam Read more about Dow Chemical and the use of napalm
August 9, 1987 Hundreds were arrested in an all-day blockade of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Golden, Colorado. Protests at Rocky Flats had been going on for some years.
(BTW – the image we’ve all seen of the exterior of the new addition is an unofficial AI rendering. I believe last week we said it was real. The REAL one is at the top of this newsletter. We apologize for the error.)
We are now long past lamenting that this stuff is not normal. The yahoos who have been installed in government have no interest in making our lives better – but they’re super good at coming up with crap to make them worse.
“Nothing is normal,” Karoli agrees. “but some things are so out of the realm of – like, for example…today’s executive order by Trump ordering a new census to be based on 2024 data with no non-citizens in the census. All of which is entirely illegal, unconstitutional.”
“Why is it that newspapers cannot say it’s unconstitutional? I mean, the Washington Post came close to saying that but they couldn’t actually say it,” she says. (NOTE: NPR does a good job here. Which is a good reminder to give to your local NPR station, if you can.)
When Karoli pointed out on social media that this latest EO was unconstitutional, someone came back at her with “Who’s going to stop him?”
That is exactly the kind of thinking that makes the authoritarian takeover complete. We still have the possibility of returning this nation to a functioning democracy – as long as we resist the temptation to become fatalistic about MAGA’s burrowing infestation of our government.
Just look at what has happened since the regime ordered Texas to engage in a highly irregular mid-cycle redistrict session to give the Republicans five more seats. The only reason this is happening is because the regime expects to lose the House in 2026, so they are doing everything they can think of to rig the election in their favor.
And we are fighting back. Those Democratic Texas legislators who fled the state to deprive Governor Abbott of a quorum are heroes in the fight for democracy. The Democratic governors who are assisting them and arranging for retaliatory re-districting are champions of democracy. And the House Democrats on the Oversight Committee who figured out they could force Chairman James Comer into subpoenaing the Epstein Files are golden.
And do you know what happens when we don’t meekly accept MAGA’s crazy maneuvers as done deals? They back down. Just look at the highest profile cases of people who have been kidnapped by ICE. Community outrage and publicity have helped get some of these folks released. But – as Aliza points out – the key to winning that battle is engaging the community.
“It is way past time for white people to do this job and this heavy lifting. It has to come from us. It HAS to. We have been reliant and allowing the people who we’ve oppressed and allowed to be oppressed save us every single time. And it is our turn… we have to have the difficult conversations with our families, with our neighbors, with our friends, with our fellow white people. We need to call these people, you know – we have to call them on their biases, and their flawed thinking. It has to happen. They can’t sit in comfort while all this shit’s happening around us,” she says.
Here’s a few of the resources I looked at while trying to understand if there actually is anyone to stop Trump from building his monstrosity of a ballroom:
Architectural Digest has this handy dandy timeline of all the many renovations that have been undertaken at the White House over the years.
One of the biggest changes to the White House occurred during the Truman Administration, which added the East Wing to the building in order to cover up an underground security bunker that was added during the war. Wikipedia’s got a deep dive into that one.
Finally: Karoli (who is a much better researcher than I) found a New York Times article (gift link) with the answer to the question we originally posed: It turns out that there IS a standing Committee for the Preservation of the White House – and it’s made up of the director of the National Park Service, representatives from the White House, the Smithsonian Institution, the Commission of Fine Arts, the National Gallery of Art and more appointees of the president.
As it turns out:
Mr. Trump has not nominated a park service director, a position that requires Senate confirmation, or announced the appointments of individuals to serve on the committee. The terms of 13 individuals that former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. appointed to the committee in 2023 expired when Mr. Trump began his second term, according to a government database. Jessica Bowron, the comptroller of the National Park Service, is currently serving as its acting director.
So the answer to that question is – No, there appears to be no one who will stop him from this one. (snip-MORE on the page, including the podcast)
Scottie's Playtime 