I never met Gordon Wood, but I have a story about him. In one of my grad school seminars, we read Wood’s Creation of the American Republic. The sheer erudition and evidentiary depth of the book bowled me over. Back then, before kids and before life accelerated to warp speed, I used to call my mother every Sunday to catch up. Lots of times, we ended up talking about what I was reading that week in my grad seminars or for leisure. Mom had an omnivorous mind, and she was always looking for something else to read. She was a true intellectual—curious about almost everything, always eager to integrate new arguments or ideas into her existing schemas of how the world worked or to have those schemas challenged and changed. When we talked that particular Sunday, I think I tried to describe to her part of Wood’s argument about the relationship between the state constitutions during the Articles of Confederation era and the federal Constitution. Maybe I was tired, maybe I didn’t completely understand her questions, but the end result of the conversation was that Mom had questions about Wood’s argument that I didn’t answer satisfactorily. I told her that she should probably just read the book, and we said goodbye. She did eventually read the book, but the next Sunday, Mom started our conversation by saying, “Well, I had a lovely conversation with Gordon Wood this week.” For a split second, I thought she was joking, but then I remembered who I was dealing with. I started to sweat. “How?” I asked. A whole variety of unlikely scenarios in which the foremost historian of the American Revolution and my mother, who lived in Wichita, Kansas, might have met ran through my mind. “Oh, I just looked up his office phone number on Brown’s website and called, and he picked up!” Mom said. I decided I would have to find another profession. As it ended up, Gordon Wood spent about an hour on the phone with my mother answering her questions about the Constitution. Ever since, I’ve had a soft spot for the man when I imagine him picking up the phone in Providence and finding Becky Elder from Wichita on the other end of the line. His generosity in that moment spoke very well of him. Rest in peace, professor.

if you can't handle local tv, how are you going to be able to handle national media, much of which has an interest in pushing/pursuing narratives about how terrible you/your state are?

Terrifying—a few ground shaking knocks by my seat at White House Correspondents Dinner, unclear if shooting. I am ok, we are trying to exit now.

🍅TOMATOES UP 15.3%

No one is writing this journalism and also no one is reading this journalism wsj.com/business/media/an-ai…

And now Elect Chicago Women super PAC, which funded millions of ads in #IL09 and #IL08, also funded over $4 million by AIPAC's United Democracy Project This is confirmation of months of mine and other's reporting that AIPAC was behind these super PACs docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/for…

My personal belief is that the President, his team, and the Israelis know far better than the press what is going on, and the press is so relentlessly, ruthlessly hostile to the Trump Administration that they're more likely to believe Iranian propaganda than that this is actually going well. As I noted yesterday, the ordinance dropped is on pace to mirror Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom with a combined strike of about 1000 targets a day from the Israelis and Americans. That's pretty consistent. The fact that the national press is barely even covering Homeland Security being shut down by Democrats in a time of war is just another data point. If Obama were bombing Syria while the GOP had Homeland Security shut down, the GOP obstruction would be the primary story every day in the press. But because it is Trump, the press is elevating the doubters, the haters, and the propagandists. The press has a real bias in this.

How is it, in a world of cell phones and cameras everywhere, that we are seeing less of what’s happening in Iran than we did during Desert Storm in 1991?

I reported this story and have been working around the clock since Saturday to cover the deaths and obtain definitive evidence so that we can confidently assign responsibility. We've been reviewing photos of the dust covered bodies of children and verifying their names against the names scrawled on little coffins. We've been debunking false claims about the attack and that the harrowing cemetery photo isn't real. And while it appeared obvious to many early on that the U.S. or Israel hit the school, it takes days to sift through, pinpoint and analyze the evidence. It took four days before a new satellite image we ordered came through so we could confidently assess the damage and the types of weapons used. All that reporting and cross checking and the production of the visuals showing it takes time. But it ultimately allows us to more confidently assert U.S. responsibility, explain our rationale and add to the body of reporting that officials should be challenged with. It's easy to critique a headline, and I agree language matters, but you diminish the reporting. We're not justifying anything, we're stating where the reporting points responsibility, and quoting legal experts on the laws of armed conflict. Here's a gift link nytimes.com/2026/03/05/world…

Prince Andrew's Arrest Never in a million years did I fathom this when I resurrected the Epstein story in 2018. open.substack.com/pub/jkbjou…

People I know at the Washington Post in Kyiv have been left stranded here and unable to literally pay for their travel home. They were fired by Bezos in an email - after years of high risk important work. It’s absolutely disgraceful