As much as I’m annoyed at the high gas prices right now, I don’t blame Biden. I blame myself. Among other factors, supply is low and demand is high, and the easiest thing I could do is to reduce my driving and reduce some of the demand. But the person who placed this sticker probably didn’t think beyond the “Biden is bad!” rhetoric infecting right wing American politics right now, and unfortunately, I live in a very conservative area, so I’m around stupid a lot. I like the sticker, though.
With a final vote Friday, Montana’s Districting and Apportionment Commission made it official: The state has a new congressional map, political lines drawn to define how Montanans are represented in the U.S. House through the 2030 election.
While the boundaries could still be subject to a court challenge, the vote represents the likely culmination of a monthslong districting process that kicked into gear when detailed 2020 census results were published in August, triggering a once-a-decade effort to recalibrate Montana’s political boundaries. The proceedings drew hundreds of publicly submitted proposals, days of verbal testimony at hearings in the state Capitol and thousands of written comments filed by residents across the state.
I’ve lived in Montana for almost 10 years, and even though my “California” politics are in the minority, this place has become like another home for me. Things got bad once Trump was elected (to be fair, things were bad everywhere once he got elected), but for the most part, I haven’t really felt like my politics ever put a target on my back. But seeing this:
This makes me feel personally attacked! What is this nonsense? The two markers on the map read “San Fransoola” and “Bozeangeles," portmanteaus for “Missoula” and “Bozeman,” respectively.
How can the past help inform today’s most pressing challenges? Every Tuesday, award-winning historians Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne Freeman use their encyclopedic knowledge of US history to bring the past to life. Together, they make sense of the week in news by discussing the people, ideas, and events that got us here today.
I wish I was there in person to watch Joe Biden get sworn in as our 46th president of the United States and Kamala Harris as our first woman vice president, but I am so grateful nonetheless. Let’s go, America!
It was a siege. It was a mob. It was anarchy. Or, as the Italian newspaper La Stampa put it in its front-page headline Thursday, “Once upon a time, there was America.”
