GP24 - Photo - Wikimedia Commons - 2013

U.S. Capitol dome at daylight

Last bet, settled

Yesterday (the Gerry-Mander): Elbridge Gerry lost his race for governor in 1812 — and within months was elected Vice President under Madison. He died in office in 1814.

The Capitol dome presides over a Congress whose very composition was reshaped by a case about a simple, radical idea: that each person's vote should count equally. For much of American history, state legislatures drew district lines and then simply refused to redraw them as populations shifted. Rural districts might hold a few thousand people while urban ones swelled to hundreds of thousands, yet each elected one representative - meaning a rural voter's ballot carried far more weight. Courts had long treated such malapportionment as a political question they could not touch. In Baker v. Carr (1962), the Supreme Court reversed course, ruling that redistricting disputes could be heard in federal court, opening the door to the principle later summarized as one person, one vote. The dome matters because the decision changed who is represented beneath it. By making apportionment a matter courts could enforce, Baker shifted power from overrepresented rural areas toward the growing cities - a quiet revolution in representation. Two years later, Reynolds v. Sims (1964) extended the principle, requiring both chambers of every state legislature to be drawn on population - one person, one vote.

Make your bet

Before Baker v. Carr, courts refused to touch how legislative districts were drawn. Guess how lopsided the population gap between districts had grown in some states before the Court finally stepped in.

Your turn - work down the ladder

1. Check the reading. Check the reading. Before Baker v. Carr, why did courts refuse to fix unequal districts, and what exactly did Baker change?

2. Read the chart. Each bar shows how many people one California state senator answered to in 1960 - Los Angeles County's senator represented about 422 times more people than the Alpine-Mono-Inyo senator. In plain terms, how much was one Los Angeles vote worth compared with one Alpine-area vote, and who benefited from keeping it that way?

3. Go deeper. Baker v. Carr let courts enforce equal representation, overriding legislatures that refused to redraw unfair maps. When elected bodies will not fix a system that keeps them in power, should unelected judges step in - and where does that end?

On the form: enter the code, your bet, and your answers to 1, 2, and 3 in Questions 1–3. Skip the ACT boxes.

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HN17 - Unit 9 / Episode 33 · works on either class page

Air mail: a word list with wings

Last bets, settled

U.S. History (the impeachment trial): zero senators from the president’s own party voted guilty on either charge. · Government (Cronkite): 73% of Americans said they trusted him in 1972 — more than any politician.

From yesterday’s Government bellwork — the shrinking sound bite

Keep this in mind as you read: from 43 seconds to nine — and then the screen moved to the feed. A leaflet is what a message looks like when it has to work in one glance — the sound bite of its day.

Before the internet, if you wanted to put a message in front of a million strangers, you flew over them and let it fall. A leaflet is a sheet of paper dropped from the sky — from bombers, from balloons, later from artillery shells — onto people you cannot see and will never meet. The person who picks it up might be a soldier, a farmer, a child. You have no control over who reads it. So the message has to work on anyone. That is the whole art of propaganda: not lying, exactly, but making a stranger feel something before they have a chance to check anything.

THE DROP: RAF ground crew hand bundles of propaganda leaflets to a bomber crew, 1940. In the first months of the war, British bombers over Germany dropped paper, not bombs.

THE LEAFLET: a “safe-conduct pass,” dropped by the million. It promised good treatment to any enemy soldier who surrendered carrying it. Many did.

THE BALLOON: when planes couldn’t cross a border, balloons carried the paper. In the 1950s, balloons floated hundreds of millions of leaflets over the Iron Curtain.

Imperial War Museum / Wikimedia Commons.

What the paper actually said

1 · The drop (Germany, 1939–40)

The British leaflets said, in short: Germans — your leaders have lied to you. You cannot win this war. Britain has no quarrel with the German people, only with your rulers. Signed by no one. Dropped by the ton.

2 · The safe-conduct pass

Printed with the flags of seven allied nations and a prime minister’s signature. It says: SAFE-CONDUCT PASS — to be honored by all government agencies and allied forces. On the back, three promises to any soldier who comes over carrying it: you will be welcomed · your safety is guaranteed · you will be treated well.

3 · The balloon (over the Iron Curtain, 1950s)

Balloon leaflets from the free world said, in short: Friends — you are not alone. The free world has not forgotten you. The truth is on its way. Some carried a tiny aluminum “freedom” coin.

Look at the three pictures. In 1940, British bombers flew over Germany and dropped paper by the ton. A “safe-conduct pass” carried flags and official seals and one promise: surrender holding this, and you will be treated well. In the 1950s, when the Iron Curtain closed the borders of Eastern Europe, balloons drifted across at night carrying leaflets from the free world. Now notice what every leaflet has in common with the word list you already have — the one with a column of words for your side and a column for the other side. Freedom. Safety. Courage. Home. Words that make you feel something and claim nothing a fact-checker could check. A leaflet is a word list with wings.

Make your bet

Over six years of World War II, Allied planes dropped leaflets over Europe on nearly every mission. Bet: how many leaflets, in total, fell on Europe from Allied aircraft?

Your turn - work down the ladder

1. Check the reading. What is a leaflet, and why does the passage say the message “has to work on anyone”?

2. Look closely. Pick ONE of the three. Using its picture AND its card, answer both halves: what is that paper trying to make the person who picks it up feel — and what does it actually claim that a fact-checker could go check? (“Nothing” is an honest answer.)

3. Go deeper. Propaganda works best on someone who wants the message to be true — a scared soldier wants the safe-conduct pass to be real. Think of a post or ad that reached you this week without you asking for it. What did it count on you feeling — and what did it count on you not checking?

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Is this normal? Presidents and their critics in the arts

Is this normal? Presidents and the artists who criticize them.

In 2003 the Dixie Chicks said onstage in London that they were ashamed the president was from Texas. Country radio dropped them, stations held CD-smashing events, and Natalie Maines got death threats. Asked about it, President Bush said they were free to speak their minds, shouldn't have their feelings hurt if people stop buying their records, and that freedom is a two-way street.

He didn't defend them. He also didn't do anything to them.

That distinction is the whole question. A president criticizing an artist, or staying quiet while others punish one, is ordinary politics. A president using the machinery of government against a critic is a different thing entirely, and the Constitution treats it differently. So:

Is it normal for a president to use government power against artists who criticize him?

No — power stayed out of it

These presidents were mocked, protested, and insulted by artists. They answered with words, or with nothing.

George W. Bush 2001–2009the in-between case

Took no action against the Dixie Chicks, and none was needed: the punishment was corporate and social. But he also declined to spend a word cooling it, which is notable because he had done exactly that for Muslim Americans after 9/11, telling the country that Islam is peace and that harassment was un-American. He protected one group from a backlash and shrugged at another.

Lyndon Johnson 1963–1969

Poet Robert Lowell publicly refused a White House arts invitation in 1965 over Vietnam, in a letter to the New York Times. Johnson fumed privately and did nothing. He had signed the law creating the National Endowment for the Arts that same year, funding independent artists while they attacked him.

John F. Kennedy 1961–1963

Argued at Amherst a month before his death that the artist must be the last champion of the individual mind against the state, and that when power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

Ronald Reagan 1981–1989

Misread "Born in the U.S.A." as a patriotic anthem on the 1984 trail. Springsteen corrected him publicly. Nothing happened to Springsteen.

Bill Clinton, Barack Obama

Both took heavy criticism from artists without retaliation. Obama's record on the press was worse than his record on artists: his Justice Department prosecuted leakers aggressively and seized AP phone records.

Yes — the government itself moved

Here the response wasn't an insult. It was immigration law, tax audits, licenses, boards, and budgets.

Richard Nixon 1969–1974

John Lennon was performing at antiwar rallies and talking about touring against Nixon's reelection. A 1972 Senate memo urged deportation as a "strategic counter-measure," and immigration authorities opened removal proceedings over a 1968 British drug conviction. Lennon fought it four years and won in 1975. Later-released FBI files showed surveillance coordinated with the White House.

The pattern was wider: an "enemies list" including entertainers and journalists, IRS audits of critics, and pressure on the broadcast licenses of stations owned by the Washington Post company.

Donald Trump 2017–2021, 2025–

Hundreds of insults aimed at performers, which is Tier 1 below and not the issue here. The issue is the rest: in 2025 he dismissed the Kennedy Center board and installed himself as chairman, prompting resignations by Shonda Rhimes, Ben Folds and Renée Fleming and a wave of cancellations including Hamilton. Add efforts to defund PBS and NPR, pressure on the NEA and Smithsonian over programming, FCC pressure on broadcasters, floated investigations into whether Springsteen and Beyoncé were illegally paid for endorsing Harris, and a suggestion that Rosie O'Donnell's citizenship be revoked.

George H. W. Bush 1989–1993a different question

Called funded artwork "filth" and his NEA imposed a decency pledge that courts struck down. But withholding a subsidy is not the same as punishing speech, and the Supreme Court has largely said so. Worth arguing about; not the same as the two above.

A ladder for sorting any of these

1. Insults

The president mocks an artist. Speech answering speech. He has First Amendment rights too. Ugly, common, bipartisan, and legally unremarkable.

2. Calls for punishment

He urges others to impose a cost: fire the player, cancel the show, boycott the album. Still his speech, but now he's recruiting. This is the rung Bush declined to climb in 2003.

3. Threats of state action

Investigations floated, licenses questioned, citizenship raised. The power isn't used yet, but the target knows it could be.

4. State action taken

Deportation proceedings, audits, boards replaced, funding pulled. The government is now the punisher. This is the rung that makes the question constitutional rather than political.

Before you conclude this is a two-man problem

Nixon and Trump are the clearest modern cases involving artists. They are not the only presidents who aimed government power at critics, and the "no" column above partly reflects a narrow question rather than clean hands.

Woodrow Wilson

Filmmaker Robert Goldstein was prosecuted under the Espionage Act and imprisoned for a Revolutionary War film that portrayed the British badly while Britain was a wartime ally. Eugene Debs went to prison for a speech.

Franklin Roosevelt

Loyalty investigations of Federal Theatre Project artists; Congress killed the program in 1939 over alleged subversive content.

Truman and Eisenhower

The 1947 loyalty-oath order fed the Hollywood blacklist; the Ten went to prison for contempt of Congress. The State Department revoked Paul Robeson's passport for eight years over his politics, which is a government punishing an artist about as directly as it gets.

Kennedy and Johnson (the asterisk on the other column)

Both are listed under "no" because they didn't move against artists. Both authorized or expanded FBI surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr. and COINTELPRO operations against antiwar and civil rights figures. The escape hatch is the word "artists," and it is a narrow one.

Two things follow. Tier 4 is not a partisan category: it has held Democrats and Republicans, and the earliest cases are the harshest. And much of what looks like restraint after 1960 is really the courts, which built most of the modern First Amendment doctrine between the 1930s and the 1970s. Presidents got less able to do this before they got less willing.

The question for you

Bush is in the "no" column because he did nothing, not because he did something admirable. Does a president have any duty to defend a critic's right to speak, or is silence enough? He thought he had that duty after 9/11. Why not in 2003?

And where would you place a president who never touches government power but tells forty million followers to ruin someone?