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Washington D.C. under siege again
Kathy Herald-Marlowe
Apr 01, 2026
August 24, 1814, Red Coats invaded Washington DC, ravaging and burning the Capitol in retaliation for Americans looting and burning York (today’s Toronto) – The War of 1812. At the White House, dinner for 40 had been prepared for a social gathering – the Redcoats sat, ate the meal, drank the wine, burned down the White House. Dolley Madison had famously departed just prior to the Red Coats’ arrival taking with her documents, some furnishings and the 8-foot, unfurled Gilbert Stuart portrait of Washington, a replica, to assure its not being fouled or brandished by the British.At the conclusion of the war, Congress debated moving the Capitol to Cincinnati but Washington DC and its buildings were renovated, the White House reopened in 1817, with Washington’s Portrait proudly displayed.Washington DC – the people’s city once again flourished.
211 years later, after the Red Coats, came Trump.In October 2025 the East Wing of the White House was demolished without advance public notice or approval of the National Capital Planning Commission or Congress.With private funding and speed the East Wing was torn down in weeks to make room for an elaborate, unreviewed, unapproved, out-of-portion 90,000 square foot State Ballroom. The speed of the demolition, privately funded by billionaires seeking favor, precluded court intervention - moot to sue the gaping hole where once stood the East Wing.57% of the public disapproved of the demolition at their White House.
Two weeks after President Kennedy’s assassination, Congress passed into law legislation renaming the in-development National Cultural Center – spearheaded by Eisenhower in his administration - to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as a “living memorial” to Kennedy tragically assassinated in Dallas. Then in February 2025, shortly after his inauguration, Trump replaced the Kennedy Center’s Board with Trump allies naming himself Board chairman. In December, 2025, the Center’s newly elected Board voted to rename the “living memorial” to Kennedy, as legislated by Congress, to the Trump-Kennedy Center. Chaos ensued. February 1, 2026, after months of failures to retain performers, retain audiences, retain donors, the Board, with an unprofitable mess, voted to close the Center for two years while stripping it down to its core metal structure.The “living memorial” to Kennedy, an architectural icon, was now voted by Trump’s Board to be demolished. Several Court cases are pending
Housing the Vice President’s Office among Treasury and Department of Defense offices, what is next on the Trump raze and redo list is the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB).November 2025, on Laura Ingraham’s Fox TV show, Trump announced his intent to power wash, point and paint the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB) opened in 1888 – a huge building of cut and polished Maine granite. Immediate court cases have been filed claiming any change to the EEOB’s exterior is subject to analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act and must comply with the National Historical Preservation Act.Trump wants EEOB painted white….painting and power washing is assessed as detrimental to the granite building.
Additionally, Trump has proposed a 250-fifty-tall triumphal arch – Independence Arch- to be constructed directly across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial.Officially the arch is said to mark the nation’s 250th celebration, though when asked who the monument would honor Trump replied “Me”.Of course, lawsuits have been filed as no congressional or agency approvals have been obtained.Concerns about the Arch and its location include that it sits along flight paths to Reagan Airport hindering low flying planes – an airport hazard - and that, so situated it, would dwarf the Lincoln Memorial as well as block the historic site line from Arlington Cemetery to the Memorial.Lawsuits are pending.
Although Trump touted a landslide electoral victory in 2024, he did not receive a majority but a plurality of the vote - he tallied the smallest win since 1900.Amid a war, a massive Epstein scandal of which he may be a party, the questions of what his son-in-law, Jared, is doing officially negotiating peace in Ukraine, Gaza and now Iran while he is openly seeking massive investments from the Middle East for his own financial company.
Trump is pulling apart the people’s places, DC once again is under siege. History, historic significance, character are not in Trump’s preview – nor seemingly is the law.
Kathy Herald-Marlowe lives in Sharon.
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Turning Back the Pages - April 2, 2026
Norma Bosworth
Apr 01, 2026
125 years ago — 1901
FALLS VILLAGE — Harry Dickinson of North Kent creamery spent Sunday at home.
J.P. Wadhams of Torrington, civil engineer, has gone to Sharon to start state road improvement in that town.
The state legislature is considering the advisability of adopting voting machines for state elections. From all reports the change would be desirable and help to do away with some of the corruption on election days.
FALLS VILLAGE — Mr. Jos. Wickwire lost his family horse Monday, he had just had it clipped and it took cold, had congestion of the lungs.
It may not be generally known that the Consolidated road owns and operates a hospital car, the only one of its kind in the country. It is fitted up with all the conveniences of a modern hospital.
One hundred newspapers for ten cents at the Journal office. Good for putting on shelves or under carpets.
100 years ago — 1926
Paul Argall is able to be out after a siege with the measles. Little Ruth Smith is ill with the measles.
Albert Tompkins has sold his closed car to Geo. H. Sylvernale.
Six of the forestry crew who are hunting the gypsy moth are boarding at Mrs. Lois Wright’s.
50 years ago — 1976
State’s Attorney John Bianchi said this week he would proceed to re-try Peter Reilly. This came after Reilly won a major battle last Thursday in his fight to clear himself in the death of his mother when Judge John A. Speziale granted a new trial. The state filed the request to appeal Speziale’s decision Monday in Litchfield Superior Court but the request was denied by Speziale. The only other recourse the State’s Attorney’s office has is not to press charges of manslaughter against Reilly.
Thursday marks the opening of a new family medical practice in Falls Village. Edmund J. King, M.D., will practice from Dr. Carl Bornemann’s office on Beebe Hill Road.
The script called for a crowd. But where in Cornwall does one find a crowd? At the door of the First Church on Sunday, of course! That is how it happened that the congregation got into the movies. The film “The Arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday” is being filmed by the church school, and although some substitutions had to be made, a pony for an ass and pine branches for palms, the spirit is there. Be sure to catch this film when it runs locally.
Chuck Willing was named Most Valuable Player in the Kent Center School intramural basketball program concluded last week. Willing led the Yellow Jackets to a 5-2 season and championship of the four-team league.
25 years ago — 2001
SALISBURY — For the second year in a row, the Litchfield County winner in the Connecticut Fire Prevention Poster Contest is from Salisbury. Christian Sherrill, a fourth-grader at Salisbury Central School, created this year’s winning entry.
SHEFFIELD — A small group of growers, proposing to establish a farmers’ market in town, have received verbal support from the Board of Selectmen and police chief, although details of the plan still need to be worked out.
Two students from Housatonic Valley Regional High School were winners in the High School Essay contest sponsored by The Connecticut Foundation for Open Government. First prize of $500 went to Rebecca Willis of Lakeville and third prize of $200 was awarded to Allison Holst-Grubbe of Sharon.
These items were taken from The Lakeville Journal archives at Salisbury’s Scoville Memorial Library, keeping the original wording intact as possible.
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Accountability terrifies public higher educators
Chris Powell
Apr 01, 2026
Connecticut’s public higher educators, or at least those with the ear of the General Assembly, want to prohibit the public from finding out what they’re teaching students at tax expense. For the fourth straight year they have persuaded legislators to advance a bill that would exempt the outlines of their courses — “syllabuses” — from disclosure under the state’s freedom-of-information law.
Thus the courses being taught — their materials, assignments, grading policies, and teaching schedules — would become state secrets.
Why? Because the higher educators are terrified of criticism — terrified that the FOI law might be “weaponized” by anti-intellectual yahoos to try to hold them to account for their work.
But of course to serve as a weapon of accountability in government is the very point of FOI law. There can be no accountability if the governed can’t examine what the government is doing.
In recent years higher education, like lower education, has been taken over by the political left and now is sometimes much engaged in propagandizing as much as teaching. Liberals and Democrats outnumber conservatives and Republicans in education jobs by dozens to one. Any institution so politically one-sided needs extra scrutiny to determine if it serves the public interest.
Indeed, the secrecy legislation sought by Connecticut’s public higher educators is proof that they can’t be trusted to serve the public interest.
The public higher educators are also again seeking legislation to prevent disclosure of records about their teaching or research on scholarly issues, again fearing that disclosure will facilitate criticism, which they deliberately misconstrue as harassment and intimidation.
Yes, some government records will always be requested by people who dislike what the government is doing or what they suspect it is doing. Some requesters of records may even be malicious. But so what?
For in a democracy people are entitled to dislike what the government is doing and even to hate it. They are simply entitled to know. The public higher educators may have forgotten it, but disliking what the government is doing was at the heart of the American Revolution.
Besides, the state Freedom of Information Commission is already empowered to dismiss requests for public records that constitute mere harassment.
The problem is that Connecticut’s public higher educators, or at least those who purport to represent them, consider simple accountability itself to be hateful. So they should switch to teaching in private colleges and universities, or in government colleges and universities in places like Russia, China, North Korea, or Iran. Their “academic freedom” might be constrained in those places, but they’d never have to answer to the public for what the government paid them to do.
Limit property
tax exemptions
New Haven is celebrating Yale University’s decision to increase its voluntary annual payment to city government by 43% over the next seven years, from $23 million now to $33.6 million in 2033. This may be generous of the university in light of the huge new punitive tax the federal government has levied on Yale’s $40-billion-plus endowment and other big university endowments.
Despite the big increase in Yale’s annual gift, the city is likely to raise its property taxes by 4%, which, like the property taxes of all Connecticut’s cities, are already far too high. Welcome as it is, the university’s higher annual voluntary payment doesn’t really address the city’s big tax problem.
That problem is that most real estate in New Haven, about 56% of it, is tax-exempt under state law, and while the university is still the city’s second-largest property taxpayer, it owns 45% of the property in the city and most of it is tax-exempt — $4.5 billion worth.
This is a gross failure of state government policy. Property tax exemptions per property owner should be sharply limited, starting with a gradual reduction of Yale’s exemption to $1 billion. Eventually that would bring tens of millions of dollars in additional revenue to New Haven city government each year, allowing a reduction in property taxes and state financial aid.
Yet state government pays little attention to the issue.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.
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Trump is remaking the government and the country in his image
James Speyer
Donald Trump is rapidly remaking the federal government in his image. To a remarkable degree, virtually every aspect of his personality is being reflected and magnified in the policies and conduct of his administration. As a result, it can feel like the country is becoming a bizarro world facsimile of itself: a morally shriveled place where racism and cruelty are state-sanctioned, might makes right, incompetence reigns, knowledge and expertise is mocked, and our democracy and the rule of law that sustains it is attacked on a daily basis.
The indisputable facts prove this. Trump, and now his administration, is:
Tyrannical
As a private citizen, Trump repeatedly expressed his admiration for dictators and strongmen who were unconstrained by the rule of law. As president, he asserts that the Constitution gives him the right to do “whatever [he] want[s].” His administration has put that belief into action by running roughshod over the Constitution: it punishes people for exercising their First Amendment rights, imprisons people without due process, grabs for itself powers reserved to Congress (such as the fundamental powers to declare war and impose tariffs), and claims to have unilaterally abolished the constitutional right to birthright citizenship.
Cruel
Trump was found liable by a jury for sexual assault. He regularly degrades women and mocks injured and disabled people. That cruelty has metastasized throughout his administration into something far more sinister and lethal. The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development has already caused the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of children under five. The so-called Department of War gratuitously and intentionally kills dozens of civilians on the high seas and jokes about it.
Violence Loving
Trump encouraged his supporters to beat up non-supporters and asked his Secretary of Defense why protesters couldn’t just be shot. ICE now inflicts terror on an industrial scale through their well-documented use of excessive force, including roughing up peaceful protesters, pepper-spraying them, and smashing car windows.
Racist
Trump’s virulent racism is so well known it literally has its own Wikipedia entry. His administration recruits ICE agents by using a white supremacist slogan (“We’ll Have Our Home Again”) and posted an AI video featuring the Obamas as apes.
Ignorant and Hostile to Science
Trump has derided climate change as a hoax for many years. That denial of reality – rooted in ignorance and contempt for science – is now official United States policy, as evidenced by the EPA’s rescinding of its landmark finding that greenhouse gases harm public health. According to the esteemed science writer Bill McKibben, that decision “has to rank as one of the signal moments in America’s descent into idiocracy.”
A Bully
As a businessman, Trump routinely took advantage of those less powerful than him, including contractors whom he regularly stiffed. His administration now bullies nations, blue states, and corporations, as exemplified by his threats to invade Greenland if Denmark (a NATO ally for 80 years!) doesn’t hand it over.
A Malignant Narcissist
Trump used to slap his name on everything from buildings he didn’t build to casinos that went belly up to failed ventures like steaks and vodka. Now his administration unfurls 40-foot banners of his face on buildings that belong to the American people, places his signature on U.S. currency, and has desecrated the Kennedy Center – a public memorial to a fallen president, just like the Lincoln Memorial – by adding his name to the building.
Incompetent
Trump declared bankruptcy for six of his businesses after running each one into the ground. His administration’s handling of the Iran war – from killing scores of schoolchildren based on outdated intelligence to failing to prepare for the closing of the Strait of Hormuz to having no plan for the evacuation of stranded Americans in the region – is just the latest example of its systemic, and deadly, incompetence.
It’s as if the worst features of humanity have been concentrated in a single individual, and that individual — who by a ghastly coincidence happens to be the most powerful person on earth — has infected our country with those features. As a result, our country is now facing its gravest danger since the Civil War.
As that war was drawing to a close, Lincoln stated in his Second Inaugural Address that “it may seem strange” that anyone would support the abomination that is slavery. It may similarly seem strange that anyone would want to live in a country remade in Trump’s image. But as Lincoln went on to state in that Address, in words that apply equally today, “let us judge not that we be not judged.” Instead, let us embrace the growing number of people (as shown in poll after poll) who are deciding that living in such a country is not what they signed up for. And let us together fight for our very different vision of America.
James Speyer is a lawyer and a volunteer for Lawyers Defending American Democracy. He lives in Sharon.