Get Your War On
It sure feels 2003 around these parts...
Welcome back to the This Day newsletter. Each week, a member of our team gathers together bits of America’s past and attempts to find a throughline that might add a little understanding to our current moment.
Below, a fascinating list of historical moments that took place this week — but first a rundown of some historical thoughts from a member of our team. Today, host Jody Avirgan…
One thing I’m reminded of this week:
Elder millenials, let out a deep sigh. It sure feels like 2003 all of a sudden, as a GOP administration talks itself into a military intervention in the Middle East. And fittingly, weirdly, there was John Mulaney on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, for some reason talking about the guy who threw his shoes and George W. Bush (starts at 16:45)
It’s a very fun few minutes — and if anyone is friends with Mulaney, please let him know that we’ve done a whole episode on the incident!
The other thing that caught my eye this week was the text message that Mike Huckabee, our ambassador to Israel, sent to Donald Trump. Which, of course, he shared on Truth Social.
Language like this reminded me of one of my favorite piece of Iraq-War era esoterica (aside from the guy throwing his shoe at Bush) — the Donald Rumsfeld daily briefings he would prepare for Bush, full of bible quotes over generic photos of tanks and planes. I posted about them on Bluesky a few weeks ago. Anyway, they are newly relevant… here we go…
One other thing I want to say this week:
We buried the lead, Kellie was on CBS This Morning this week, talking Juneteenth and more! Go Kellie!
Here’s what happened over the week ahead in American political history…
June 19
1856: The first Republican National Convention ends with John C. Fremont as the nominee
1859 : A skirmish on the San Juan Islands over a pig that intruded on a farmer’s potato crops leads to an argument, which leads to a diplomatic crisis, which almost leads to a war between the US and Canada
1862: Slavery is outlawed in U.S. territories
1865: The abolition of slavery is announced in Texas on "Juneteenth," a day now celebrated as Emancipation Day
1953: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of espionage during the Cold War, are executed for passing atomic secrets to the Soviets
1964: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is approved after surviving an 83-day filibuster in the United States Senate
June 20
1782: Congress adopts the Great Seal of the United States, including the iconic bald eagle
1840: Samuel Morse patents his dot-dash telegraphy signals, known to the world as Morse code
1895: Caroline Willard Baldwin becomes the first female to earn a PhD from an American university (in Science) at Cornell University
1921: Congresswoman Alice Mary Robertson becomes the first woman to preside over the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives
1963: The United States and the Soviet Union agree to establish a nuclear "hot line," a communication system aimed at preventing misunderstandings during the Cold War
1979 : Jimmy Carter holds a ceremony to celebrate the new solar panels that had been installed on the White House roof. The panels were symbolic support for new energy initiatives, but also looked to reduce the building’s energy bill at a time of soaring gas prices
1986: News of the death of basketball star Len Bias is starting to spread around the country. Bias died of a cocaine overdose just days after being drafted by the Boston Celtics.
June 21
1788: The U.S. Constitution comes into effect as New Hampshire becomes the 9th state to ratify it
1790 : In lower Manhattan, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison sit down in a meeting brokered by Thomas Jefferson to work out a major compromise involving the Treasury department and the location of the U.S. Capitol
1946 : An epic battle is playing out across the radio waves, as The Adventures of Superman takes on a multi-part series in which the Man of Steel confronts “The Clan of the Fiery Cross,” a loose stand-in for the KKK
1956: Playwright Arthur Miller defies the House Committee on Un-American Activities by refusing to name suspected communists during the McCarthy era
1964: Civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney are killed by a Ku Klux Klan lynch mob near Meridian, Mississippi
1989: The Supreme Court rules that burning the American flag as a form of political protest is protected by the First Amendment
June 22
1870: U.S. Congress creates the Department of Justice
1944: President Franklin Roosevelt signs the "GI Bill of Rights" (Servicemen's Readjustment Act), providing support to veterans after World War II
1990: South African leader Nelson Mandela visits Boston, Massachusetts, as part of a worldwide “thank you” tour after being released from prison
1992: The Supreme Court rules that "hate crime" laws violated free-speech rights
June 23
1888: Abolitionist Frederick Douglass becomes the first African-American nominated for US President
1926: The College Board administers the first SAT exam in the U.S.
1959: Convicted Manhattan Project spy Klaus Fuchs is released after only nine years in prison and allowed to emigrate to Dresden, East Germany
1968 : “Resurrection City,” occupies the National Mall in Washington D.C. for six weeks
2016: The Brexit referendum results in the United Kingdom voting to leave the European Union
June 24
1861: Tennessee becomes the 11th and last state to secede from the Union
1884: John Lynch becomes the first black elected chairman of the Republican convention
1948: The Soviet Union begins the West Berlin Blockade by stopping access by road, rail and water
1957: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment in the landmark case Roth v. United States
2009: South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford is exposed for having an affair with a woman in Argentina
June 25
1798: The US passes the Alien Act, allowing the president to deport dangerous non-citizens
1868: Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina are readmitted to the US after the Civil War, marking an end to Reconstruction
1913 : In “The Great Reunion,” 50 years after the Battle of Gettysburg, Civil War veterans return to swap stories and shape the story of how America remembers that conflict
1962: The Supreme Court rules New York school prayer unconstitutional
1997: U.S. Air Force officials release a report dismissing long-standing claims of an alien spacecraft crash in Roswell, New Mexico
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