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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
July 13, 2026
Heather Cox Richardson
Jul 14, 2026
Today began with yet another demonstration of the fact that the U.S. options for extricating itself from Trump’s war on Iran with conditions anywhere near as good as they were under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated with a number of countries under President Barack Obama, or even as good as they were in February 2026 before Trump and Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu launched air strikes on Iran, do not appear promising.
At 10:16 this morning, Trump announced on social media that the Strait of Hormuz “is OPEN, and will remain OPEN, with or without Iran. We are reinstating THE IRANIAN BLOCKADE, so named because it is only stopping Iran’s ships or customers from entering or leaving. All other countries will have fair and open use of the Strait. The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,’ but as such, and as a matter of FAIRNESS, will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped, for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World. The process and formation will begin immediately.”
In other words, the U.S. is restarting hostility—a blockade is an act of war—and, according to Trump, will protect the Strait of Hormuz but expects to be paid.
Trump has been clear that he considers the memorandum of understanding he signed on June 17 no longer in force, probably not least because Iranian officials interpret the words of the hastily constructed deal as giving Iran control over the Strait of Hormuz. They have been clear they intend to charge fees for passage of the strait, a condition the U.S. rejects although Trump’s current claim that the U.S. will charge fees seems to undercut the U.S. position.
Crucially, officials in the Trump administration continue to deny that Congress has any role in declaring war, despite the clear language of the Constitution. Under the 1973 War Powers Act, the president can respond without congressional input to an “imminent threat” so long as the president notifies Congress in writing within 48 hours of the beginning of hostilities. After that notification, the president has only 60 days before he must either end hostilities or secure congressional approval for them.
Trump got around this law first by overruling his own intelligence agencies to insist that Iran posed an imminent threat to the U.S. Then when the May 1 deadline for either withdrawal or congressional approval approached, he claimed that hostilities had ended on April 7 with the declaration of a ceasefire, notwithstanding that both sides continued to shoot at each other and the U.S. maintained its blockade of Iranian ports.
Now they are claiming the power simply to start the clock again. On Friday, Trump formally notified Congress that the U.S. has resumed strikes on Iran, claiming the Pentagon has another 60 days to strike Iran before the timeline specified by the War Powers Act runs out.
Today Elizabeth Dwoskin, Andrew Ba Tran, Luis Melgar, and Peter Jamison of the Washington Post reported that Trump’s sons “Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have amassed a portfolio of defense technology start-ups that are benefiting from new Pentagon priorities and spending, further entangling the United States’ interests and the Trump family’s financial fortunes.” They have invested in more than a dozen defense companies that have collectively received at least $3.2 billion in business directly from the government since those investments, along with $3.1 billion in options for future contracts.
Tonight U.S. Central Command announced it has begun a third night of strikes against Iran.
At about 7:15 this morning, an agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shot and killed 26-year-old Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine. According to staff from the Portland Press Herald, Guerrero was from Colombia and was authorized to work in the U.S. The Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition said he had a Social Security number and was on his way to work.
Spokespeople for ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, have not commented. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) has called for “a full and impartial investigation,” but as her political opponents note, Collins voted just last month to give ICE another $70 billion. ICE and Border Patrol had become far less visible as Republicans worked to pass supplemental funding for ICE and Border Patrol through Congress. In the wake of that new funding, immigration sweeps are back in the news. Protests broke out today outside Collins’s Biddeford office.
Senator Angus King (I-ME) told Patrick Whittle, Leah Willingham, and Jack Brook of the Associated Press that Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin told him Guerrero had tried to use his vehicle as a weapon against officers, forcing the agent to shoot. This allegation has been a common one for agents trying to justify fatal shootings, including that of Renee Good in Minnesota. Witness Daniel Boucher said that in the aftermath of the shooting, he saw Guerrero “bleeding profusely from the head. He was talking. He said: ‘I tried to stop.’”
This evening, Representative Chellie Pingree (D-ME) said she had learned that the man ICE shot and killed was not the person they had an order to pick up. ‘
In a statement tonight the Department of Homeland Security claimed that the officer shot because he was “fearing for public safety.” David Bier of the Cato Institute and Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the Immigration Council both called out that language, noting DHS was claiming not that the officer feared for his life, but that he had a vague concern for “public safety.”
The ICE killing of a man in Maine comes less than a week after ICE shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo of Houston, Texas. Salgado Araujo was a Mexican national who had lived in the U.S. for 35 years and was close to obtaining legal status. His son told Lekan Oyekanmi, Jack Brook, and Jeffrey Collins of the Associated Press that the homebuilder knew what to do when approached by ICE but may have feared that the men following him in unmarked SUVs intended to steal his tools.
ICE said the officers “attempted to conduct a vehicle stop as part of a targeted enforcement operation to arrest an illegal alien” and that Salgado Araujo “rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer.” It added that an officer “discharged his weapon in self-defense.”
A lawyer for two of the people in the van with Salgado Araujo denied that he tried to ram officers. A source later told Dalia Faheid, Chris Boyette, Priscilla Alvarez, and Caroll Alvarado of CNN that ICE’s description of the events that killed Salgado Araujo as a “targeted enforcement operation” was misleading. While that may have been the case, Salgado Araujo was not the target. They saw him in his van near the target and thought he “resembled the target.”
José Olivares of The Guardian noted that Salgado Araujo was the tenth person shot and killed by federal immigration officers from either ICE or Border Patrol this year. Twenty-one more people have died in ICE detention this year.
This afternoon the Trump administration finally turned over to Minnesota investigators evidence from the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January. That evidence includes statements, video from police body cameras, and Good’s badly damaged SUV.
Today U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of Florida Kathleen Williams said Trump, his lawyers, and the lawyers for the Department of Justice had manufactured the so-called settlement of Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. “[T]he Court finds that this matter was brought for an improper purpose—to gain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact,” she wrote. They launched the lawsuit “as a means of conferring legitimacy upon a course of action that they were unwilling to subject to judicial review.”
The course of action they intended to take was to establish a $1.776 billion slush fund for Trump loyalists who claimed that the Department of Justice under former president Joe Biden had been weaponized against them. While that part of the deal got most of the attention, probably more important to Trump was the addition to the “settlement” announced the next day: a promise that Trump, his family, his businesses, and even his “associates” would be immune from prosecution for any tax crimes revealed by audits of tax returns filed before May 19, 2026.
“No sitting President has ever sued federal agencies completely subject to his control for monetary benefits, or any benefits that inure to him, his family, and associates,” Williams wrote. After Trump dropped his lawsuit, thirty-five former judges had asked Williams to set aside her dismissal of the case with the goal of determining whether the claimed “settlement” was a fraud on the court.
In her opinion, she noted that the question before the court was simply whether there was a legitimate lawsuit, and the answer was no. The final disposition of the slush fund and the immunity were not questions before the court. “Whether Executive Branch actors can privately agree to give themselves and their former clients blanket immunities and billions of dollars in tax monies for legally undefined grievances was never an issue advanced to this Court. The question is whether the Parties could do so by claiming to be adverse and engaging the legitimacy of a court proceeding. The answer is a resounding ‘no.’”
Williams recommended legal sanctions against some of the lawyers involved and said she was “extremely troubled” by the testimony of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, which was “at best, misleading and, at worst, disingenuous.”
Blanche used to be Trump’s personal defense lawyer and has said he believes he has a “continuing duty of loyalty” to Trump. The president has nominated Blanche to become attorney general. His confirmation hearings begin on Wednesday.
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
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Okay, so, I need to talk about this, obviously KPop Demon Hunters was a fucking hit, and it's songs (rightfully) are chart toppers
BUT GOLDEN DOES NOT DESERVE TO BE
The Radio Song™
The whole fucking song, in this queer-coded movie that's about struggling with an identity that you've been concealing for fear of judgment and hatred, for fear of discrimination and exile, AT IT'S CORE, IS ABOUT BEING DISINGENUOUS TO YOURSELF AND SUPPRESSING THE TRUTH TO FIT IN WITH PEOPLE'S PERCEPTION OF YOU.
The fuckin lyrics may as well be "I'M GOIN BACK BACK BACK IN THE CLOOOOOSET"
Your Idol, Free, Takedown, What it Sounds Like, How it's Done, LITERALLY ANY OTHER SONG SHOULD BE THE *POPULAR* SONG, NOT THE ONE THAT'S LITERALLY THEMATIC TO LYING TO YOURSELF AND ACTING LIKE YOU'RE EMBRACING TRUTH
I hate AI
I hate it when I go to tumblr, or wattpad, or AO3, searching for ages for a story that interests me, just for the writing to feel off, like its written perfectly but the tone is so weird.
Then just for peace of mind I copy a chunk of the text and put it in an AI detector, and that shit tells me it's suspecting the text to be 48% or 100% AI. LIKE GOD.
Like fandoms aren't toxic as it is, now we have people with AMAZING premises i haven't heard before, like the blurb is sooooo damn promising, just for me not being able to enjoy it because it doesnt feel human, and it turns out it's not. Like im just trying to read XYZ x Reader so I can imagine it's me with my book boyfriends just for me to not be able to enjoy it because the tone and the pacing feels void of human touch.
If you cannot honestly write decent fanfiction, just dont? Its simple as that. Its worse when I check the person's page and all the stories are 100% AI or a good chunk of it is AI and they have like hundreds of followers and people requesting their amazing premises for the person behind the screen to write, and they are so damn polite about it like 'I completely understand if you dont want to or can't do this right now' ect ect, just for the piece of shit behind the screen to pop the premises in an AI generator and hold it for 2 weeks to make it seem like they took their time writing it when it took 20 sec.
Whats worse is that I tried to approach a person on tumblr very nicely how they shouldn't be using AI because
Its disingenuous
Its bad for the environment
It will not develop any writing skills for the person running the damn page
I was so damn nice about it, and yk what that person did? THEY MF BLOCKED ME. I can't even blast the person because I can't find their page anymore and I didn't think i was going to get blocked so I didn't memorise the username.
Tldr: I hate AI written stories, and when i tried to tell sm1 they shouldn't use AI for their stories thet blocked me.
“I have a great idea, and I’d love to hear what you think of it,” he said.
“Yeah, I can see why you like that idea,” she said. “Here are some difficulties I see coming up in the execution.”
“What?” he said. “Sorry, I wasn’t listening.”
“Why aren’t you sharing your opinions?” he asked, taping her mouth shut.
“You seem irritated, and you’re getting awfully adversarial,” he continued, shutting her in a small, dark room.
“Why won’t you just contribute?” he shouted through the locked door as he started bricking up the entrance.
“Why are you so angry? This is inappropriate behavior,” he scolded as she kicked through the rubble of the building, screaming. “I always would have welcomed your ideas.”
'But that wasn't him. That was only how he wanted people to think he was, while all the time he was someone else.'
John Banville, from Snow