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Heather Cox Richardson
Personal blog · heathercoxrichardson.substack.compoliticshistory
Heather Cox Richardson writes Letters from an American, a personal blog at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com about politics and history. Since 2020, 12 different Hacker News readers have linked it 27 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-02, and you can follow it by feed.
27mentions?
12HN people?
2020–2026first – last linked?
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Heather Cox Richardson's Substack, a history professor's daily newsletter that gives historical context on US politics, guns, Jimmy Carter and current events, including Ukraine and Minneapolis.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A newsletter about the history behind today's politics.
Most-linked posts?
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-05-27
What Hacker News says?
> While the meeting was presented as a “live” event, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, one of the advisors, was wearing a watch showing that the event was recorded five hours before, thus placing it before the “governments” of the regions asked for recognition. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-21-2022
Comment linking /p/february-21-2022
on “Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack”Submitted June 22, 2020 as a story · 13 points
HN discussionThe historian Heather Cox Richardson has written a lengthy, generous account of his life and legacy: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-29-2024 As a non-USian who was young when he was president, he has always seemed to me to be a decent person who tried to do good with what he had, and understood the limits of his own ambition. We need more like him.
Comment linking /p/december-29-2024
on “Jimmy Carter has died”Submitted Electoral College as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAn heroic historical effort, imo: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted October 31, 2020 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionU.S. law requires the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to have served as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief of staff of the Army, the chief of naval operations, the chief of staff of the Air Force, the commandant of the Marine Corps, or the commander of a unified or specified combatant command. Just after 2:00 a.m. eastern time this morning, the Senate confirmed Retired Air Force Lieutena…
Comment linking /p/april-11-2025
on “$70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money”Submitted Letters from an American as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAs a non-American I found Heather Cox-Richardson's recent substack newsletter post [1] to be useful in understanding how the US has got to this point. She's a history professor at Boston College and she does a good job of describing how gun ownership and control came to be (intentionally) politicised, and how the NRA's role has changed over time. Honestly, I don't see how the US is ever going to dig itself out of th…
Comment linking /p/may-24-2022
on “Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)”Submitted July 4, 2020 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThere appears to be more and more people throwing back against Trump; after the courts recently again said no to his need to plaster his name on the Kennedy Centre, he went a wailin' to his supposedly in pocket Kennedy Centre board: But even that is not providing him comfort these days. Representative Joyce Beatty (D-OH), an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center board and the member who sued over his takeover of t…
Comment linking /p/september-16-2026
on “US interest rates raised for first time in three years”That was the news release strategy, the actual behind the scenes strategies were a bit more enthusiastic based on what I've been reading on Substack. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-14-2024
Comment linking /p/november-14-2024
on “Terence Tao: "It can become more rational to think and act more boldly"”As a non American you have a semi reasonable chance of being to sit back, take a beat, and watch (maybe) Trump implode and self destruct within the US system and maybe some following rebuilding of the system "as intended" with better safeguards. Trump’s triumphant narrative is not working at home, either. A new CNN poll released Friday shows that fifty-eight percent of Americans believe that Trump’s first year in of…
Comment linking /p/january-16-2026
on “Eight European countries face 10% tariff for opposing US control of Greenland”Mmmm, I'm not so sure about that anymore ... at least not for a while yet. Trump has a lot of leeway to declare emergency rulings and to have those enforced in the short term. Such powers come with a short leash that require appeals to be addressed in a short time frame. That mechanism was upended twenty four days ago when US Republicians effectively "stopped time" .. Each day for the remainder of the first session…
Comment linking /p/march-12-2025
on “Wall Street Blew It”You got me. The best I could posit was to further the Trump plan to force US allies and not allies to team up together, isolating America from the taint of globalism. For a more informed opinion, US Historian Heather Cox Richardson had much to say; an excerpt being: … In 1949, Congress replaced the National Military Establishment name, whose initials sounded unfortunately like “enemy,” with Department of Defense. Th…
Comment linking /p/september-5-2025
on “U.S. Department of War”Some of the legislation actually being passed is disturbing in Byzantine non obvious ways. Trump has a lot of leeway to declare emergency rulings and to have those enforced in the short term. Such powers come with a short leash that require appeals to be addressed in a short time frame. That mechanism was upended two days ago when US Republicians effectively "stopped time" .. Each day for the remainder of the first…
Comment linking /p/march-12-2025
on “EPA Launches Biggest Deregulatory Action in U.S. History”> Defintiely not vigilantism So, free speech, licenced carry, local community resisting unlawful warrents, etc are all ok? Voting, in the USofA, is ineffectual - it takes years to make change and the choices are essentially shite .. barely a Democracy, more a Republican Autocracy by design. Of interest: On Monday, Judge Patrick J. Schiltz of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, appointed by Preside…
Comment linking /p/january-28-2026
on “Kash Patel says FBI is investigating Signal chats of Minnesotans tracking ICE”Professor Heather Cox Richardson (US History) has a blunt near daily summary with frequent call backs to significant high and low points of the past two and a half centuries: eg: August 15, 2026 - https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-15-2026 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Cox_Richardson
Comment linking /p/august-15-2026
on “So How Is AI Drug Discovery Doing, Really?”An unexpected hero arises ... The administration’s pressure on ABC to fire comedian Jimmy Kimmel is very unpopular, as G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers notes, with people polled by YouGov on September 18 seeing it as an attack on free speech. That unpopularity showed today when podcaster and senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) celebrated Kimmel’s firing but called the threat of Federal Communications Commission Chairman…
Comment linking /p/september-19-2025
on “Trump: 'It's no longer free speech.'”US Republicans "stopped time" wrt responding to the POTUS emergency Tariff powers a full twenty nine days ago. Each day for the remainder of the first session of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day for purposes of section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622) with respect to a joint resolution terminating a national emergency declared by the President on February 1, 2025. ~ https://…
Comment linking /p/march-12-2025
on “House Republicans move to block vote on Trump's tariffs”Gilding, albeit more toilets than lilies, is on the up and up. If there was any standardized measure, a Grift Index if you will, then that would surely be showing exponential growth for certain players. The Trump grab for an airport named after him is just the latest grift in a presidential term that experts so far estimate has enriched the Trump family by at least $4 billion. ~ https://heathercoxrichardson.substack…
Comment linking /p/february-16-2026
on “Long-term unemployment is becoming 'a status quo' in today's job market”There's lengthy commentary on this from Heather Cox Richardson, an American Professor of History at Boston College, that begins: Late last night, the Trump administration released the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) of the United States of America. It did so quietly, although as foreign affairs journalist at Politico Nahal Toosi noted, the release of the NSS is usually accompanied by fanfare, as it shows an ad…
Comment linking /p/december-5-2025
on “National Security Strategy of the United States of America [pdf]”And/or/but... "Letters from an American, January 10, 2026" https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-10-2026
Comment linking /p/january-10-2026
on “Minneapolis Is Not Even a Close Call –A Lawsplainer on Officer-Involved”There are many legitimate journalists on the platform. Painting a broad-brush does a disservice to those that put a lot of effort into their reporting. Edit: Check these out. https://noahpinion.substack.com/ https://petestrzok.substack.com/ https://www.thebulwark.com/ https://damonlinker.substack.com/ https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ https://joycevance.substack.com/ https://thedispatch.com/ (No longer on S…
Comment linking /
on “Why Substack?”Who will bell the cat? Does the US system even have the means to bell the cat? International affairs journalist Anne Applebaum noted in The Atlantic the childish grammar in the message, and pointed out—again—that the Norwegian Nobel Committee is not the same thing as the Norwegian government, and neither of them is Denmark, a different country. She also noted that Trump did not, in fact, end eight wars, that Greenla…
Comment linking /p/january-19-2026
on a deleted threadFor one alternative to newsrooms Today, for the second time in as many days, President Donald J. Trump suggested that Americans want a dictator. In a meeting in the Cabinet Room that lasted more than three hours, during which he listened to the fulsome praise of his cabinet officers and kept his hands below the table, seemingly to hide the bad bruising on his right hand, Trump said: “The line is that I'm a dictator,…
Comment linking /p/august-26-2025
on a deleted thread
