I’m a big fan of Heather Cox Richardson, the American historian of the nineteenth century who teaches at Boston College. Her Letters from an American is the most-read Substack, and she has spread its focus from the echoes of nineteenth-century politics in the present day to current domestic politics in general.

I was struck by a recent, multi-layered post, in which–assuming I understand it fully–she writes that Washington’s official announcements about the Iran war are presenting an inaccurate picture, by overstating damage to Iran and understating damage to the US. She believes this because leakers are revealing the true information.

Why the leaks? Their motivation is not just the apparently misleading nature of the official announcements. It’s also the leakers’ belief that Trump sold the top secret information he retained after his first term to hostile foreign powers.

Not really a good look for the president.

This is hearsay. But it has always seemed to me that there had to be some trigger that started the search for the documents Trump held. The obvious one would have been the arrest/imprisonment/death of the source that provided the information.

If any of this is correct, the city on a hill isn’t a shiny today as it used to be.