Letters from an American - Lies, Threats, and Looting

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

June 27, 2026The reflecting pool fiasco represents the Trump administration perfectly,  The remodeling of the West Colonnade, which Trump said he had paid for, was in fact paid for by the taxpayers, Trump is redirecting taxpayer money from the National Park Service, The looting of our tax dollars is turning the resources of the country to the administration’s own ends, People are paying with their lives, as research funds are being allocated for political reasons, and faith in science and experts is being destroyed, Hegseth is decimating the US Military, firing more than two dozen military leaders, The US and Iran are trading strikes again and Trump is making apocalyptic threats against the country, Mike Johnson promised “to take care of” a group of Trump supporters against a possible Republican loss in the midterms.Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-Get full, free access to Letters from an American here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribeYou can also find me:Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/heathercoxrichardson/?hl=enFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@heathercoxrichardson Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

June 27, 26. Observers are noting that the reflecting pool fiasco, in which Trump created the idea there was an emergency, ignored experts, bypassed normal procedures to give a wildly inflated contract to a crony, bragged about his success, ignored the problems, claimed his enemies had sabotaged him, and finally stationed troops around the landmark he had turned into a swamp,

represents the Trump administration perfectly. But a report by Michael Scherer of the Atlantic about Trump's remodeling of the West Colonnade is perhaps an even better representation of the Trump presidency. In March, Trump tore up the light brown Tennessee flagstone that paved the walkway in the West Colonnade that connects the White House residence to the Oval Office and replaced it with polished black African granite carved in Italy.

When a reporter asked Trump who was paying for the remodeling, Trump answered, Paid for by me. But, as Scherer discovered, that was a lie. He examined National Park Service budget documents, showing that the walkway replacement cost taxpayers $689,232, all part of a $1.3 million project that includes new hardware for nearby doors. Last year, Scherer reports, the National Park Service spent $347,503,000 to replace the stucco on the Colonnade wall so Trump could hang pictures of the U.S. presidents alongside plaques featuring his own

opinions of them. Documents say the project was a Rush project at request of President of the United States. Sure explains that Trump has redirected taxpayer money from national parks around the country to his own projects, leaving the parks unable to make needed repairs or hire staff. Expected funding for more than 900 park service projects never arrived, including $424,000 to replace a guardrail on the edge of a cliff in Colorado's Gunnison National Park, that National Park Service employees identified as a significant safety hazard for visitors. For some parks, nearly 70% of approved funds have been pulled back. Trump has also pulled National Park Service staff to Washington, D.C. for his Freedom

250 events, a crisis because the Park Service has lost almost a quarter of its staff since he took office. In his 2027 budget, Trump calls for cutting staff by another 3,967 full-time employees, or 31%. That budget also asked for another $10 billion to beautify Washington, a sum that sure notes, is nearly eight times as large as all the money spent on National Park Service projects in 2025. The Senate Appropriations Committee, that request out of its marked-up version of the president's budget. This administration appears eager to keep what's happening in the national parks out of sight. Early this year, the Department of the Interior instructed its employees that they could not share information about serious

injuries or deaths on public lands, instead redirecting all such information through the Department of the Interior's Office of Communications. As outdoors writer West Seiler reports in his West Silers newsletter, the Interior Department manages the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Reclamation, and Bureau of Indian Affairs. Those agencies are responsible for about 20% of all land area in the United States, hundreds of millions of annual visitors, and spend annually 88.6 billion, taxpayer dollars. As Jake Spring reported in the Washington Post, more than 300 million people

visit America's national parks each year, and about 350 of them die, not always from accidents. In the past, park service employees could identify deaths or injuries from unsafe conditions, warning others from the area. Now, the communications team from the Interior Department controls that information and does not always release it. It did not release the information that a 72-year-old man died of extreme heat on a popular trail in the Grand Canyon on June 12th of this year. National Park Service employees wanted to warn other visitors, but the Interior Department did not release the information. Four days later, a couple, aged 67 and 68, also died of extreme heat on the same trail.

The profligate use of our tax dollars for whatever Trump and his cronies want, while the American people suffer, is at least as representative of Trump's reign as the peeling, algae-filled, militarily guarded Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. This president and administration are turning the extraordinary resources

of the American people, the things we the people have created over decades with our effort and our tax dollars to their own ends. We are paying for their theft with a significantly diminished country, and even with our lives. On May 29, 26, the administration proposed dramatic changes to the awarding of federal research grants. Rather than continue awarding research grants on the basis of a merit system established through rigorous peer review. The administration proposes to base federal research grants on approval by political appointees. It refers to an executive order Trump signed in May 2025 that said previous governments had politicized science with their response to the COVID-19 pandemic, concern about

climate change, and incorporation of diversity, equity, and inclusion in scientific studies, and called for a return to a gold standard of scientific research. The lead driver of the proposed change is the officer of management and budget directed by Christian nationalist Russell Vote. Vote was a key author of Project 2025, and the plan will empower his team in the executive branch to divert tax dollars to channels he approves rather than those scientists support. The proposed changes limit foreign collaboration, and if the government decides a grant is failing to effectuate program goals, federal agency priorities, or the national interest, the Office of Management and Budget can yank the grant.

Americans created world-class research universities and institutions during and after World War II, as it became clear that it was more cost-effective for the federal government to award grants to those researchers doing the work their peers, recognizing the work their peers, recognized as the best in the country, rather than trying to create such labs for the government. Relying on businesses, they realized, would limit scientific and medical research to avenues that promised to produce short-term profits. So they developed a web of universities and scientific institutions where tax dollars could be allocated only to those doing superior work in areas that offered long-term scientific and medical advances.

In the process of doing that work, university researchers share their discoveries with each other and train the next generation of scientists, creating an extensive network of scientific advances that generate new products and new treatments, and that has made the United States a world leader. The American people paid for that system, with their work and their money. Now, Trump's hand-picked loyalists want to dismantle it to advance their own ideology. As economist Paul Krugman noted in February in his newsletter, destroying faith in science and experts leaves people open to the idea that they should reject the establishment and instead follow right-wing leaders like Health and Human Services

Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Krugman also notes that, according to McKinsey, spending on wealth, in the U.S. alone amounts to about $500 billion a year. Americans paid close to $70 billion for nutritional supplements alone. And as the administration tears up the system, people die. An ardent supporter of Secretary Kennedy, Dr. Joseph Mercola, has urged parents to be skeptical of vitamin K shots for newborns, which the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended since 1961. Right-wing figures pushed those concerns, and Kennedy has refused to recommend the shots, which prevent catastrophic bleeding in newborns. In May, Dua L. Debe of ProPublica reported that parents

increasingly are refusing the shots, and that newborn deaths from vitamin K deficiency bleeding are on the rise. Murkola has now publicly and strongly changed his previous stance. It's not just babies at risk. After World War I, the so-called Spanish flu decimated U.S. soldiers coming home from the war, and as Christina Stassis of Air Force Times reports, since the 1950s, the military has required that service members be vaccinated against the flu. In April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegzeth called the requirement overly broad and not rational and complained that it would, weaken our warfighting capabilities. Just two months later, more than 220 troops at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas came down with the flu. One sick trainee died of a medical emergency. An investigation

of the cause of his medical emergency is underway. When Hegseth changed the requirement, Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican of Mississippi, an Air Force veteran, noted that the reason it was mandatory was to enhance readiness. Representative Joaquin Castro, a Democrat of Texas, who represents the district where Lackland is located, posted that Hegzeth's ending of flu vaccinations was a reckless decision that put troops in harm's way and undermined our military readiness. Greg Jaffe and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times reported that after the outbreak, the Air Force required vaccines for all the recruits at Lackland. Just as administration officials are tearing up the scientific research Americans have built

over the last 80 years, Hegsuth is also tearing up the U.S. military, which Americans have built with their blood and treasure since 1775. Philip Timotia of the Hill noted that since he took over at the Pentagon last year, Hegesith has gotten rid of more than two dozen senior military leaders with little or no explanation. Those include General CQ Brown Jr., the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the Navy's Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Linda Fagan, the Commandant of the Coast Guard, General Randy George, the Army's Chief of Staff, and General James Mingus, the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army. Last week, Hegseth added General Chris Donahue, the commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa,

to that list. Donahue has had a storied career and commands wide bipartisan support in Congress. Senator Tom Tillis, a Republican of North Carolina, called the firing, yet another unforced error from a secretary leading the Pentagon with bro-culture bravado rather than restraint, humility, and careful stewardship of the finest fighting force in the world. Hegzeth is more interested in purging people he perceives as insufficiently loyal than empowering proven patriots who can actually lead, Tillis wrote. It's sophomoric, it's unserious, and it's bringing great harm.

to our Department of Defense. That lack of seriousness has given us Trump's debacle in Iran, where the U.S. and Iran are trading strikes again over Iran's control over the Strait of Hormuz. Benoit Fosant, Summer Saeed, Costas Paris, and Robbie Gramer of the Wall Street Journal, reported Thursday that Iran expects a payoff of $40 billion a year in payments for security, safety, and environmental services from vessels crossing the

strait, leaving Iran stronger after Trump's war than before it. Tonight, Trump made apocalyptic threats against Iran, posting that, United States aircraft just struck Iranian missile and drone storage locations and coastal radar sites for violating the ceasefire agreement again. It is very possible that they will never learn. There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started. If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist. Administration officials and their cronies are turning the country we worked so hard to build into a vehicle for building their own power and their own wealth. And Republicans in

Congress have steadfastly refused to stop the looting or even to investigate. So lax have they been that last month, Emily Davies of the Washington Post reported that White House lawyers had begun private briefings for administration officials on how to prepare for congressional oversight in case Democrats win the midterms. Yesterday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana, a Trump loyalist, warned a crowd at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference in Washington, D.C. If we were to lose the midterms, heaven forbid, these Democrats, y'all, impeachment's not even the big concern. They will turn every committee of Congress into an investigative body, and they'll go after the president's family, the cabinet, his donors and friends.

Half of you in this room will be targeted. I run the protection program. I'll take care of you. Okay? We're gonna win. We're gonna win the midterms. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead of Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.