“I plead the Fifth.”

It’s one of the most recognizable phrases in American law — and one of the most misunderstood.

In this weekend’s episode of America at 250: Due Diligence, Bill Bernardoni and I look at the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination. As Bill says, of all the episodes we’ve done so far, this is the one he’s been most excited to put together as co-producer of our radio show/podcast. It is certainly filled with 20th century drama and takes us right up to this summer’s testimony before the Republican-controlled Congress by Dr. Anthony Fauci that led to the former top federal health official being held in contempt after the refused to answer questions in a hearing about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Brandeis University professor Thomas Doherty takes us back to the 1947 Hollywood hearings, when the Hollywood Ten refused to answer questions from the House Un-American Activities Committee and ultimately went to prison for contempt of Congress. From there, the story moves to mob boss Frank Costello, the televised Kefauver hearings and the McCarthy era, when congressional investigations became national television events and “taking the Fifth” took on a meaning far beyond the courtroom.

Then the brilliant Constitutional scholar Jeffrey Rosen, who is George Washington University law professor and the former president/CEO of the National Constitution Center traces the protection against self-incrimination back to England’s Star Chamber. He explains what the Fifth Amendment actually protects — in criminal cases, congressional hearings and in an era of cell phones, digital records and electronic evidence.

To grasp why the Constitution’s framers felt it imperative to enshrine this right we have to remember the brutal legal mechanisms they were actively trying to escape. In 16th and 17th-century England, ecclesiastical courts and the infamous Star Chamber relied heavily on the ex officio oath. This inquisitorial tool compelled individuals to swear to God that they would answer all questions truthfully long before they were even informed of the charges against them. It created what legal historians call the “cruel trilemma”: a person forced to take the oath faced eternal damnation and criminal perjury if they lied, severe physical punishment for contempt if they remained silent, or outright self-incrimination if they told the truth.

If there is a hero in this centuries-long drama, he enters the stage in 1637 when he was put on trial. “Freeborn” John Lilburne was an outspoken Puritan dragged before the Star Chamber for distributing unlicensed religious texts. Lilburne refused to take the oath, arguing forcefully that no free man should be legally compelled to act as his own chief accuser. For his defiance, he was publicly whipped, pilloried and thrown into prison. His highly public resistance galvanized the English. By 1641, the Star Chamber was completely abolished and the common law privilege against forced self-incrimination began to take root.

When British colonists crossed the Atlantic, they carried the dark memory of the Star Chamber’s abuses with them. The aggressive interrogation tactics of royal governors in the colonies, combined with the painful legacy of forced confessions during the Salem witch trials, cemented the aversion to inquisitorial justice in the culture of early America.

When James Madison, the foremost champion of religious liberty, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press in the Founding Era — and who would become the fourth U.S. president — drafted the Fifth Amendment in 1789, the absolute right to remain silent wasn’t viewed as a convenient shield for the guilty. Rather, it was celebrated as a fundamental, necessary safeguard for the innocent against the natural overreach of state power—a stark contrast to the highly suspicious lens through which the American public in our era often views the invocation of the Fifth Amendment.

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America at 250: Due Diligence airs on nearly 90 radio stations in the United States, including WRCT FM 88.3 Pittsburgh (Wednesdays 10am); KVOI AM 1030 Tucson (Sundays 6am); WVOG AM 600 New Orleans (Sundays 9am): KSLM AM 1220/FM 104.3 Salem, Oregon (Saturdays at noon); WMQM AM 1600 Memphis (Thursdays 5pm); WITA AM 1490 Knoxville (Saturdays 1pm); WUMS FM 92.1 Oxford, Mississippi (Sundays 9am) and there are multiple Radio Free America™ transmissions throughout every weekend via WRMI in Florida, the largest commercial shortwave broadcaster in the Western Hemisphere.

Funding for the show comes from civic-minded individual contributors to the Jordan Center of Journalism Advocacy and Innovation and the support of the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi. The program is distributed via the Talk Media Network, Public Radio Exchange and the Radio Free America™ project. If you like what we’re doing with the radio show and podcast, we would appreciate your grassroots support by clicking here.

Everyone knows George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin. But some who played crucial roles in creating the United States have faded into oblivion.

In this weekend’s episode of our radio show and podcast, America at 250: Due Diligence, co-host Bill Bernardoni and I look at two of the most consequential and overlooked figures of the founding generation: John Dickinson and Gouverneur Morris, both whom scholars label “penmen.”

Historian Jane Calvert, director and chief editor of the John Dickinson Writings Project and author of Penman of the Founding, joins us to explain how Dickinson became one of the most famous Americans of the revolutionary era, why he refused to support independence when Congress voted in 1776, and why his decision to abstain was very different from opposing the Revolution. She also discusses Dickinson’s military service, his antislavery efforts, his influential political writings and how John Adams, the second president of the United States, bad-mouthed Dickinson, helping shape the negative reputation that followed the fifth president of Delaware for generations.

Our other guest on program, Dennis Rasmussen, a Syracuse University political science professor and author of The Constitution’s Penman: Gouverneur Morris and the Creation of America’s Basic Charter, introduces us to one of the most colorful characters at the Constitutional Convention. (Gouverneur was Morris’s given name, he never became a governor.) Morris spoke more often and proposed more motions than any other delegate and ultimately became the principal draftsman of the Constitution’s final text—including the words We the People. Rasmussen explores Morris’ opposition to slavery, his vision of a strong national government and presidency, his remarkable career in revolutionary France and the mystery of why someone so central to the Constitution remains largely unknown today. For those who want to go beyond our polite discussion and are curious about the bizarre death of this peg-legged philanderer, Rasmussen’s book includes the graphic details which we didn’t think appropriate for family radio (but we’ll give a warning they have to do with a urinary tract blockage and a whale bone catheter).

This is one of the more compelling episodes of the program since we went on air at the start of June, shining the spotlight on two founders who helped shape the American Revolution and the Constitution. While there are distinct reasons Dickinson and Morris faded from public memory the singular question remains: Who gets remembered in American history—and who gets left out?

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America at 250: Due Diligence now runs on nearly 90 radio stations in the United States, including WRCT FM 88.3 Pittsburgh (Wednesdays 10am); KVOI AM 1030 Tucson (Sundays 6am); WVOG AM 600 New Orleans (Sundays 9am): KSLM AM 1220/FM 104.3 Salem, Oregon (Saturdays at noon); WMQM AM 1600 Memphis (Thursdays 5pm); WITA AM 1490 Knoxville (Saturdays 1pm); WUMS FM 92.1 Oxford, Mississippi (Sundays 9am) and multiple Radio Free America™ transmissions throughout every weekend via WRMI in Florida, the largest commercial shortwave broadcaster in the Western Hemisphere.

Funding for the show comes from civic-minded contributors to the Jordan Center of Journalism Advocacy and Innovation and the support of the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi. It is distributed via the Talk Media Network, Public Radio Exchange and the Radio Free America™ project. If you like what we’re doing with the radio show and podcast, we would appreciate your grassroots support by clicking here.

House and Senate armed services committees were notified Aug. 14 by the chair of Stripes' publisher's advisory board of the navy captain's unannounced appointment and that the move likely meant Lederer's termination by the Department of Defense (aka Department of War) was imminent.

“The sudden placement of a high-ranking, uniformed spokesman in this role would appear to conflict with the organization’s historic commitment to civilian leadership. Mr. Lederer, as a civilian CEO, has successfully modernized and monetized Stripes operations by using and often creating industry best practices,” wrote Rufus Friday in his message to the lawmakers. “As a result, Stars and Stripes is not regarded as house organ, but rather as a trusted provider of multimedia news and advertising that serves service members and their families all over the world. Stars and Stripes has been lauded by national organizations for its neutral and centrist content.”

The latest turmoil comes four months after the firing of the newspaper’s ombudsman, a role established by Congress to provide independent oversight and protect the paper’s editorial integrity. That action came a month after a DoD memo that asserted content restrictions and expanded Pentagon oversight of the newsroom, which is tasked with delivering independent, fact-based reporting to U.S. service members around the world, including those on the front lines of combat.

Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth has been quite transparent that he wants Stripes, which he regarded as “woke,” to become a mouthpiece to parrot the Pentagon’s talking points.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that the fresh assault on Stripes comes after the newspaper had been at the forefront of detailing the conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln — reporting which angered Navy brass, the Pentagon chiefs and the White House.

Watching the destruction of another taxpayer-funded journalistic institution has me suffering from PTSD, as the game plan and its brazen execution echoes the gutting of the Voice of America, where I was a reporter for more than 20 years. VOA, also mandated by law to be objective and autonomous, is now firmly in the hands of the State Department and its few daily newscasts in a handful of languages sound like the writers spent more time in Pyongyang than Washington. VOA’s home page remains inexplicably frozen at March 15, 2025.

Some of my former VOA colleagues have been fighting in court for the proper restoration of the broadcaster, which was continuously on the air from 1941 until mid-March of last year. Likewise, lawsuits have been filed to protect Stripes.

In early June, Suki Dardarian and Bill Church, both recipients of Pulitzer Prizes and members of the Stripes publisher advisory board, represented by the legal advocacy group Democracy Forward, filed suit alleging DoD violated the Administrative Procedure Act by abruptly repealing longstanding historical regulations from the Code of Federal Regulations that protected the newspaper’s editorial freedom—doing so without required public notice-and-comment procedures. Later that month, Jacqueline Smith, the former Stripes ombudsman — a congressionally mandated position established in 1991 to monitor threats to the free flow of news to service members — also went to court, alleging wrongful termination in direct retaliation for exercising her First Amendment rights. Smith was ousted just after she published an opinion column criticizing Pentagon leadership for removing syndicated comics from the newspaper and raising alarms about government interference with the publication’s editorial independence.

It now appears that the Defense Department will be the defendant in additional legal actions as a result of the Pentagon moving to place military personnel into leadership positions inside the paper’s headquarters, violating the recognized firewall of editorial independence.

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We’re back on the radio for the second consecutive weekend exploring the separation of church and state following the previous installment of America at 250: Due Diligence (Faith Without Force), which traced the origins of religious liberty from the persecution of dissenting Christians in colonial Virginia to today's debates over Christian nationalism, We also learned the dangers of being a Baptist or a Quaker during the American Revolution. Bill Bernardoni and I mostly asked the questions of and were enlightened by John Ragosta, who earned both a PhD and a law degree from the University of Virginia and is historian at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello and a fellow at Virginia Humanities. Our other guest, Russell Moore, the editor in chief of Christianity Today, was straightforward in responding to my skepticism that we’ve ever truly had separation of church and state in the United States.

Now we look at that tension returning, after a number of decades, to the classroom, in an episode titled ‘Whose Religion?’ which we decided to prepare after the decision of the state of Texas to require displaying the Ten Commandments in public schools.

The Texas law stipulates a specific version you won’t see displayed in most churches or synagogues. Unless you are theologian it might be a revelation that there are two Biblical versions (one from Exodus, another from Deuteronomy) and three numbering traditions (Talmudic, Philonic and Augustinian) of the Ten Commandments. Texas went with the Eagles’ version. We’re not talking about the 70’s rock band or the Philadelphia football team, rather the late 19th century fraternal organization formed by six theater owners in Seattle who had gathered to discuss how to handle a musicians’ strike. Cecil B. DeMille, who produced and directed both of The Ten Commandments movies (1923 and 1956), was a member of the Fraternal Order of Eagles, which inscribed on their tablets a shortened Exodus version of the King James Bible with Americanized spelling, but retaining the 17th century sprinklings of ‘thou’ and ‘thy’ because it sounds, well, more biblical.

Similar Ten Commandments laws have emerged in Louisiana and Arkansas, while some states are also considering Bible-based curriculum and school chaplain programs. Supporters argue these policies recognize America’s history and religious heritage. Opponents say they cross a constitutional line by putting government behind a particular faith.

For this week’s episode we have Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, discussing her organization’s legal challenges to Ten Commandments laws and why she believes freedom of religion must also protect Americans from government-imposed religion. Then religion journalist Bob Smietana joins us to delve into the political and religious forces driving these measures, the rise of Christian nationalism and why teaching about religion can be very different from government promoting it.

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America at 250: Due Diligence now runs on nearly 90 radio station in the United States and is one of the few (maybe the only?) regularly scheduled weekly program that airs on conservative talk, religious and liberal (public, non-profit) stations, bridging some deep divisions, including KVOI AM 1030 Tucson (Sundays 6am); WVOG AM 600 New Orleans (Sundays 9am); WGBH FM Boston (Sundays 8pm): KSLM AM 1220/FM 104.3 Salem, Oregon (Saturdays at noon); WMQM AM 1600 Memphis (Thursdays 5pm); WITA AM 1490 Knoxville (Saturdays 1pm); WUMS FM 92.1 Oxford, Mississippi (Sundays 9am) and multiple Radio Free America™ transmissions throughout every weekend via WRMI in Florida, the largest commercial shortwave broadcaster in the Western Hemisphere.

Funding for the show comes from civic-minded contributors to the Jordan Center of Journalism Advocacy and Innovation and the support of the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi. It is distributed via the Talk Media Network, Public Radio Exchange and the Radio Free America project. If you like what we’re doing with the radio show and podcast, we would appreciate your grassroots support by clicking here.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits the establishment of religion while protecting its free exercise. But the phrase most closely associated with that principle—a “wall of separation between church and state”—does not appear in the Constitution. It comes from an 1802 letter written by President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut.

In the latest episode of America at 250: Due Diligence, my co-host, Bill Bernardoni, and I trace the origins of religious liberty from the persecution of dissenting Christians in colonial Virginia to today’s debates over Christian nationalism, the Ten Commandments in public schools and whether the United States should be considered a Christian nation.

Historian John Ragosta takes us back to colonial Virginia, where the Church of England was the official, tax-supported religious institution. Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers and other dissenters faced discrimination, violence and imprisonment. More than half of Virginia’s Baptist ministers spent time in jail, often for preaching without government permission. Ragosta explains that these dissenters were not demanding freedom from religion. They were deeply religious people who believed government interference corrupted genuine faith. As the American Revolution approached, their political support became essential—and they demanded an end to church taxes and religious restrictions, as well as eliminating state control over marriage, poor relief and the placement of orphaned children. Their struggle helped shape the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, the aforementioned Jefferson letter to the Danbury Baptists and the First Amendment. Ragosta argues that figures such as Jefferson and James Madison saw religious liberty not only as a political principle, but as a safeguard against the persecution and conflict that followed whenever government claimed the authority to define legitimate belief.

We also were fortunate for this episode to interview Russell Moore, editor of Christianity Today and a former Southern Baptist Convention ethics leader. Moore explains why Baptists once stood among the strongest defenders of church-state separation—and why he believes parts of the modern Christian nationalist movement have abandoned that tradition. He also weighs in on the debate over posting the Ten Commandments in public schools, the difference between teaching students about religion and imposing religious belief and the difficult question of who decides which version of scripture receives government approval. Moore, who prior to entering ministry was an aide to Rep. Gene Taylor of Mississippi, argues that faith spreads through individual conviction and persuasion, not through laws, political power or state decree.

From imprisoned Baptist ministers and Jefferson’s “wall of separation” to public-school classrooms and the modern Christian nationalist movement, our examination of why some of America’s most committed believers fought so fiercely to keep government out of religion reveals that separation of church and state was not necessarily created because the founders believed religion was dangerous. Many believed faith was too important to entrust to political leaders—and that once government gained the power to promote one religion, it also gained the power to suppress another.

Does separating church and state protect Americans from religion—or does it protect religious faith from political power? Share your thoughts with us here or send the program a private message.

America@250: Due Diligence is our groundbreaking non-partisan, non-commercial program and podcast that has been picked up by about 90 radio stations* across the United States. Funding for the show comes from civic-minded contributors to the Jordan Center of Journalism Advocacy and Innovation and the support of the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi. It is distributed via the Talk Media Network, Public Radio Exchange and the Radio Free America project. If you like what we’re doing with the radio show and podcast, we would appreciate your grassroots support by clicking here.

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*Among the stations airing the program: KVOI AM 1030 Tucson (Sundays 6am); WVOG AM 600 New Orleans (Sundays 9am); WGBH FM Boston (Sundays 8pm): KSLM AM 1220/FM 104.3 Salem, Oregon (Saturdays at noon); WMQM AM 1600 Memphis (Thursdays 5pm); WITA AM 1490 Knoxville (Saturdays 1pm); WUMS FM 92.1 Oxford, Mississippi (Sundays 9am) and multiple Radio Free America™ transmissions throughout every weekend via WRMI in Florida, the largest commercial shortwave broadcaster in the Western Hemisphere.

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“It should concern every journalist and every American who values a free press that vital First Amendment rights are being decided in a case where the courts have kept important evidence secret from the public by keeping the documents under seal,” said Herridge, who also has not seen the evidence. “Court records confirm it includes the Defense Department’s decision to terminate the plaintiff’s federal funding on national security grounds.”

Herridge is an Emmy Award-winning investigative correspondent; formerly with ABC, Fox, and CBS; reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Qatar, Israel, Northern Ireland, Russia, and the former Yugoslavia and graduate of Harvard and the Columbia Journalism School, where she founded a national security reporting scholarship. She is now an independent journalist on social media.

Herridge made remarks after an introduction by Club President Mark Schoeff Jr.

Herridge on advice of counsel, did not take questions, but she stayed to listen to Toni Locy recite a similar ordeal. Locy, who spent 25 years as a reporter before joining the Washington and Lee University journalism faculty, was herself held in contempt in 2008 for refusing to name sources behind her USA Today reporting on the FBI’s flawed investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks.

Laura Handman, a Davis Wright Tremaine partner representing publishers and broadcasters in First Amendment litigation, and Eric Hageman, a Clare Locke LLP partner who represented Dominion Voting Systems in its case against Fox News, brought different vantage points — media defense and plaintiff-side defamation — to the hour-long conversation.

I moderated the session along with my co-host on the America at 250: Due Diligence radio show, Bill Bernardoni. An edited version of the discussion is airing this weekend. [The podcast version is on all the major distribution platforms, or you can listen to it here.]

Among the other topics discussed in this episode:

• The FBI’s pre-dawn search of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s home and seizure of her devices, and the Privacy Protection Act questions it raised

• Justice Department subpoenas (now withdrawn) served on New York Times reporters, including phone records tied to coverage of the president’s return flight from Qatar

• Prospects for a federal shield law (the PRESS Act) and Rep. Jamie Raskin’s efforts to revive it

• State anti-SLAPP laws and how they discourage lawsuits designed to shake down news organizations

• Whether the Supreme Court should reconsider New York Times v. Sullivan and the “actual malice” standard

• The Dominion v. Fox News settlement and its influence on defamation doctrine

• Lawsuits brought by President Trump against news organizations, including settlements with ABC and CBS, weighed against Teddy Roosevelt’s own defamation suit against a newspaper

• Legal fights over editorial independence at Voice of America and Stars and Stripes

• Audience questions on shield-law prospects, leak investigations, and public trust in the media

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Support for America@250: Due Diligence comes from the Jordan Center for Journalism, Advocacy and Innovation at the University of Mississippi School of Journalism and New Media. The production, distributed globally via Talk Media Network, the Public Radio Exchange and WRMI via the Radio Free America™ project, relies on no corporate or organization’s support to maintain its non-partisan approach. Rather it is funded by supportive listeners like you. If you like what we’re doing with the non-profit, independent radio show and podcast and can contribute, click here.

Thank you so much for your deeply touching letter regarding our upcoming rate hikes. It is truly inspiring how you frame an extra $8 a month (estimated, your mileage may vary) as an exciting new opportunity for customer engagement. The sheer acrobatic skill required to spin a price increase into a heartwarming mass email about “what we can do together” deserves its own industry award.

It is comforting to know that these skyrocketing fuel costs are being passed along “without markup”—what a relief! And I am reassured to learn that a multi-billion-dollar utility giant is operating as a humble, non-profit charity just trying to keep the lights on out of the goodness of its heart.

If only you could keep the lights on. In our Virginia community served by Dominion Energy nearly every time the wind blows slightly harder than a gentle breeze or there’s a thunderclap, we know we are about lose power for hours, if not days. Just a minor inconvenience for those of us who can afford to purchase expensive whole-house generators. Mine is fueled with a 500-gallon propane tank to ensure we can survive for a week without your precious electricity. (Yes, week-long outages continue to occur here in the 21st century, less than 50 miles from the White House.) At the current rate of $3.57 per gallon, a full tank of propane costs a mere $1,785.

Apparently, burying a single mile of vulnerable, overhead power lines which repeatedly get knocked down by the same row of trees is far too expensive for a company floating proposed mega-mergers and raking in massive revenue, whose slogan is “Powering Your Every Day.” If only you could power us every day.

I am confident things will change for the better if you are able to get your $67 billion after selling out to NextEra Energy. And we can surely anticipate that the Florida-based utility (market cap of $187 billion), is certain to place a higher priority than you, a Virginia-based company, on its far-away residential ratepayers here in the Commonwealth.

We are delighted that we will be making our payments to NextEra, whose key subsidiary, Florida Power & Light, was implicated in off-the-books campaign finance schemes, funding “ghost candidates” to skew state elections, spying on a journalist and influencing news coverage. These scandals triggered shareholder derivative suits, internal leadership shakeups and a $150 million securities fraud settlement. A small price to pay for such behavior. NextEra has also faced federal enforcement actions for violating wildlife and environmental protection rules. Our neighborhood’s bald eagles can’t wait for the sale to go through.

We perfectly understand why Dominion Energy cannot invest in basic, functional infrastructure for long-suffering residential customers when those funds are far better spent to accommodate massive, energy-hungry data centers owned by tech billionaires.

I have full confidence that the three lawyers who compose the state’s decision-making body which will review your rate hike request, the Virginia State Corporation Commission, will vote in the best interest of the residential consumer. After all, the chairman used to be at the law firm which has been a primary regulatory counsel for Dominion Energy. How about that? Another member of the commission was a top executive for a lobbyist association mostly composed of utility companies and other power producers. And the third was formerly with two law firms which have major practice groups dedicated to the energy sector and represent electrical utility companies as clients. Their appointments were wisely made by the Virginia General Assembly, a sage body in which at least 80 percent of the lawmakers have taken campaign contributions directly from Dominion Energy or its political action committees. This should totally reassure constituents that their elected representatives are of, for, and by the people.

I guess we should ignore the skeptics who doubt rate hikes, grid “upgrades” and corporate expansions are designed to make it affordable for our families not to perspire inside their homes in the summer and to stop our teeth chattering in the winter. Those critics contend that our rates balloon to help bankroll high-voltage power lines like the controversial “Kraken Loop” (perfect name) that you intend to erect through our backyards, neighborhood parks and school playgrounds. Nothing says “we’re here to help” quite like running 500,000 volt lines over children’s heads so an AI data farm can consume the equivalent of the power needs of the entire city of Roanoke. (That’s not hyperbole, do the math.)

Your suggestions in the letter on “what customers can do” are particularly thoughtful:

• Track and adjust energy use: Excellent idea. During the next routine blackout caused by a mild gust of wind, our energy usage will sit at a crisp zero kilowatt-hours.

• Explore Budget Billing: Splitting inflated costs into predictable, monthly installments certainly makes funding billionaire infrastructure projects much easier to digest!

With profound gratitude for the upcoming rate hike and the unstable power supply,

Steve

(A “Valued” Customer)

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The thirteen colonies had no navy, no national treasury and little credibility among Europe’s great powers. Defeating the British Empire would require more than success on the battlefield. The revolutionaries needed weapons, loans, trade, diplomatic recognition and powerful foreign allies. They also had to persuade European leaders and ordinary citizens that a collection of rebellious colonies could become a stable and successful nation.

In the latest episode of our weekly radio show/podcast, America at 250: Due Diligence, we present an edited version of a panel hosted by the Public Diplomacy Council of America (of which I’m a member).

The event, which also aired on C-SPAN, was held at The George Washington University with cultural critic Martha Bayles, public diplomacy scholar Caitlin Schindler and author and former NPR correspondent Eric Weiner who examined how Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and other American representatives practiced public diplomacy long before the term existed.

Bayles explores the sharply different diplomatic styles of Franklin and Adams. Franklin arrived in France already celebrated as a scientist, inventor, and writer. His plain clothing, fur cap, wit, manners and carefully cultivated public image allowed him to appear both distinctly American and perfectly at home among the French elite. Adams was less comfortable with the customs and excesses of the French court, but his skepticism about power and human nature reflected another important strand of the American political tradition.

Schindler explains how Franklin and his colleagues used the eighteenth century’s most powerful communications technology—the printing press—to combat British propaganda and influence European opinion. They developed relationships with foreign publishers, placed information in European newspapers, and arranged translations of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and state constitutions. Those documents did more than explain the reasons for the Revolution. They helped demonstrate that the emerging country possessed the political institutions and stability necessary to become a credible ally and trading partner.

Weiner presents Franklin as America’s first international celebrity and one of the Revolution’s most effective diplomatic operators. Franklin worked with the limited resources available to him, understood how the French viewed the conflict, built relationships in salons and scientific societies, used humor to disarm opponents and appealed to the larger ideals behind the American cause. He also knew when not to respond, sometimes waiting 24 hours before sending an angry letter—and frequently deciding not to send it at all.

The panel considers what Franklin’s approach can teach the United States today, particularly his preference for softer language, his ability to maintain relationships across political and religious differences and his understanding that influence often depends on listening, adapting and seeing the world through another person’s eyes.

Questions from the audience expand the discussion to the American Revolution’s influence on France, the global reach of American popular culture, the founders’ possible reaction to modern political discourse, relations with Native American nations, the overlooked roles of women during the Revolution and the eventual creation of a professional United States Foreign Service.

It is the story of how a country that did not yet officially exist persuaded the world to take it seriously—and how Benjamin Franklin helped transform a vulnerable rebellion into an international cause.

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With his own research and that of Sarit Hand of AP Corporate Archives, he writes about Telstar. Mark has kindly given permission for us to post his compelling article here today.

Mark Mittelstadt - At 3 p.m. Eastern 64 years ago today (July 23), a large antenna in Andover, Maine, relayed an electronic signal to a 171-pound satellite to begin a live television broadcast from the United States to Europe.

Telstar 1, launched from Cape Canaveral 13 days earlier, was the first telecommunications satellite and achieved live international transmission of television images.

“Americans got a look at Europe, and Europeans got a look at the United States Monday in the first exchange of live television programs,” a New York-datelined story from The Associated Press said. “Pleasantries were expressed on both sides of the Atlantic, as the once-formidable distance between the two continents shrank to the size of a home television screen.”

The 20-minute American broadcast, and a subsequent European feed hours later, marked a huge advancement for international communications via satellite. It supported much of what AP and other companies would later achieve. It also was a Cold War thumb in the eye to the Soviet Union, whose launch of its Sputnik 1 satellite in 1957 caught American officials off-guard and is viewed by many as the start of the global space race.

_{The Telstar satellite circled the globe about every 157.8 minutes, with a perigee of 503 miles and an apogee of 3,502 miles. (AP Wirephoto Map)}

The American part of the broadcast was hosted by CBS anchor Walter Cronkite and NBC co-anchor Chet Huntley. Europe received panoramic glimpses of American life including the Statue of Liberty, a presidential news conference, a busy Detroit expressway, a summer theater, hula dancers, astronauts, the United Nations, a fairground and the chiseled faces on Mount Rushmore.

In an apparently unscripted moment, Huntley announced the Maine center had linked with the satellite early so to fill time before President John Kennedy’s news conference producers cut to a broadcast of a Chicago Cubs - Philadelphia Phillies baseball game. During the minute and a half feed, it was announced to the Wrigley Field crowd that the game was appearing on Telstar and they were encouraged to stand and cheer. Which they did.

Europe followed approximately three hours later with pictures of Big Ben in London, a Paris street scene, a Swedish maid, Sicilian boats and fisherman, a Vienna riding school, the Square of the Republic in Belgrade, a Rome opera, a scientific center in Geneva and the heart of industrial Germany.

The short Mount Rushmore segment provided the memory of a lifetime for our family. Tent camping in the Black Hills, our parents drove us to the national monument. As we became aware much later of the significance of July 23, 1962, my sister and I don’t know whether our folks knew they were taking us to an historic event that included a short performance of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, or just to see the iconic 60-foot faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

_{The Mormon Tabernacle Choir performed at the foot of Mount Rushmore on July 23, 1962, part of the first live international satellite broadcast called Operation Telstar. (LDS Church Archives)}

In a scrapbook entry, our mother wrote that “the line of cars moved slowly and some stalled along the way... Cars were turned away because of performance of Mormon Tabernacle Choir on Telstar. As we approached the entrance, we were flagged into (the) parking lot. Crammed down peanut butter sandwiches and ran to the amphitheater. Saw the cameras taking pictures. Heard the beautiful music. Hawk circled overhead.” Dad used his Brownie 8mm camera to film a 30-second now grainy sweep of the choir and the hundreds of people filling the amphitheater seats.

On cue to catch their split in the broadcast, the choir opened with a song meant to appeal to the sensibilities of Europe, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” composed in the 1520s by Martin Luther. It was followed approximately five minutes later by the American anthem “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which served as the musical bed for closing scenes of the American broadcast.

Before the choir’s performance the broadcast showed a Dakotas buffalo herd stampede, live and on cue, prompted by dynamite and shotguns.

The choir’s appearance at Mount Rushmore was a last-minute addition arranged by William F. Turner, described years later by the New York Times as a “fast-talking 33-year-old television executive” in Rapid City, S.D. Turner was not Mormon but knew President John F. Kennedy through connections made while working in New England. He said he used that leverage to get a spot on the Telstar ticket.

Informed of being part of the satellite broadcast only two weeks before, 310 choir members gathered at a Salt Lake City airport at 3:30 a.m. July 23 for a flight to a South Dakota military base. A two-hour bus ride to the national monument was made under what the Times called “a dark and threatening sky.” As the singers waited on the platform in white blouses and dark suits, torrential rain fell, drenching them and their sheet music.

“Choir finished and it poured down rain,” our mother wrote. “Ran through it to car... The choir was the highlight of the entire trip.”

At age 8 I could not comprehend in 1962 the full significance of what we saw or realize what the advancements in international communications would mean to what would become my employer two decades later. From the company’s archives, AP played a major role testing distribution of content over transatlantic satellite.

Immediately after the July 10 Telstar launch, television pictures were being relayed into the homes of Americans with images also being picked up in France and England. An AP archive entry said “the first news photograph was a pooled picture from The Associated Press and United Press International.”

“On its seventh orbit, the space vehicle proved its versatility by receiving and sending back pictures, telephone conversations and wire service stories simultaneously. The stories were sent by the Associated Press and United Press International from Andover, Me., via the satellite to Holmdel, N.J., then to the wire service’s New York offices. The transmission was by ‘data speed’ equipment which can send 1,000 words a minute, so the stories were bounced from Maine to New Jersey via space in about half a minute. While the stories were being transmitted, several pictures also were being sent and received via the satellite also newsmen and officials were carrying on two-way space telephone conversations.”

_{AP Foreign News Analyst Bill Ryan in New York talked with London News Editor Bob Tuckman via Telstar. (The AP World)}

An Aug. 17, 1962, AP story read in part: “Research engineers sent a newspaper front page into space and back today in one minute via Telstar. Among other things, the method used in the experiment could be applied in publishing a worldwide daily newspaper, with the same edition being printed within minutes in locations thousands of miles apart.”

Telstar 1 remained active for only seven months before it prematurely failed due to Starfish Prime, a high-altitude nuclear test conducted by the United States. Although the satellite is no longer operational, it still circles the Earth. Wikipedia’s entry continually updates the number of years and days it has been in orbit.

AP continued exploring delivery through space. In March 1963 the company transmitted a wire photo via the NASA communications satellite Relay 1 to London, Paris and Rome simultaneously “and itself got the same picture by under-ocean cable on a receiver a few feet away,” the company reported. “Newspapers all over Europe made page 1 use of the picture, which reached them via the AP European Wirephoto network.”

_{Associated Press Wirephoto graphic showing how signals were relayed through Telstar.}

The AP annual report for 1962 said “An historic communications satellite, Telstar, was launched in July, marking a major step in the era of space communications. AP news stories and pictures were transmitted experimentally. Ultimately such highspeed transmission will be worldwide and on a regular basis.”

A 36-minute video of the American Telstar broadcast can be viewed here.

(With thanks to Sarit Hand, Global Manager of AP Corporate Archives, who provided considerable help researching this story.)

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This weekend’s episode of our nationally syndicated radio show/podcast, America@250:Due Diligence, begins with one of the nation’s first overseas conflicts. When Thomas Jefferson refused the demands of the Pasha of Tripoli, he sent the young United States Navy into combat against the Barbary powers—without requesting a formal declaration of war. Congress knew about the campaign, financed it and allowed it to continue, establishing an early precedent for presidential military action supported through congressional acquiescence.

Author Joseph Wheelan, whose book Jefferson’s War chronicles the conflict, explains how the Barbary campaign tested the military and constitutional authority of the new republic.

Retired Army Brigadier General Ernie Audino argues the Constitution gives the commander in chief the authority to commit American forces to combat, while Congress retains its most powerful check: the ability to withhold funding. Drawing on nearly three decades in uniform and his experience advising Kurdish Peshmerga forces in Iraq, General Audino also examines the importance of clearly defining the political objective before military action begins—and the growing implications of artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons.

Former Illinois Congressman and Air Force combat veteran Adam Kinzinger (who was a hit speaker at our Jordan Center symposium earlier this year in Oxford, Mississippi) offers a view from both the cockpit and Capitol Hill. He argues that presidents sometimes need the flexibility to act quickly, but that Congress has repeatedly surrendered its constitutional responsibilities. Lasting military action, he says, requires lawmakers to vote, the president to explain the mission and the American public to understand what its forces are being asked to accomplish.

From Tripoli to Pearl Harbor, as well as Korea, Vietnam, Iran and Venezuela, this latest episode, titled, The Power of War, asks whether America’s constitutional system can function when formal declarations disappear—and whether Congress and the president are still willing to share responsibility for the gravest decision a nation can make.

Meanwhile, we’re taking America@250: Due Diligence to a live audience at the National Press Club this coming Tuesday where co-host Bill Bernardoni and I will be taping an episode, the ‘First Amendment on Trial,’ focusing on threats to press freedom. We’ll have remarks from veteran investigative journalist Catherine Herridge, formerly with ABC News, Fox News, and CBS News. In February 2024, Herridge was held in civil contempt by a federal court for refusing to disclose her confidential sources for a series of national security reports on Fox News in 2017. Later this summer, Herridge and her legal team will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to consider her First Amendment case, which has significant implications for journalists across the United States. On July 2, the Court denied Herridge’s application to halt the $800 a day in court fines.

Washington and Lee University’s journalism professor, Toni Locy, has been through a similar legal ordeal and we will hear from her during the event. In 2008, a federal judge held Locy, then a reporter for USA Today, in contempt of court for refusing to reveal the identities of confidential sources who provided information for stories she wrote about the FBI’s flawed investigation into the deadly 2001 anthrax attack. Locy was subpoenaed as a witness in a civil lawsuit filed by scientist Steven Hatfill, who had been identified by Attorney General John Ashcroft as “a person of interest” in the anthrax attack investigation but never charged. Hatfill sued the U.S. Department of Justice, accusing federal agents of violating his rights under the 1974 Privacy Act. A federal judge held Locy in contempt when she refused to identify her sources and imposed escalating fines while barring her from accepting help in paying the penalties. The judge threatened additional sanctions, including jail, if she continued to disobey his order. The Justice Department eventually settled the lawsuit with Hatfill.

Also joining us will be attorneys Laura Handman and Eric Hageman.

Laura Handman, a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine, has established many of the key precedents that have strengthened the protection for content—winning the first U.S. decisions to refuse to enforce foreign libel judgments, leading to passage of the SPEECH Act; establishing the standard in New York for libel by implication; establishing a heightened standard before the government can access records of a customer's expressive content purchases, establishing that internet rankings are opinion, defeating use of RICO in libel suits against advocacy groups and securing for satire protection from libel and right of publicity claims. Laura is on the executive committee of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Eric Hageman is a partner at Clare Locke LLP, known for its defamation litigation. Clare Locke has repeatedly sued major media outlets and public figures, most notably co-leading Dominion Voting Systems’ $787.5 million settlement with Fox (a high drama of its own within the firm). It has also prevailed with earlier high‑profile verdicts and settlements against Rolling Stone and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

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America@250: Due Diligence is our groundbreaking non-partisan, non-commercial program and podcast that we’re fortunate has been picked up by about 90 radio stations across the United States. It is made possible by a few civic-minded contributors to the Jordan Center of Journalism Advocacy and Innovation, the support of the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi and is distributed via Talk Media Network, the Public Radio Exchange and the Radio Free America project.

If you like what we’re doing with the radio show and podcast, we would appreciate your grassroots support by clicking here.

By: Patsy Widakuswara

The war with Iran is driving fuel shortages and inflation around the world, deepening anti-American sentiment at a time when international confidence in the United States is already in decline. A June Pew survey found unfavorable views of the U.S. rising across 36 countries.

This is precisely the moment Washington needs credible international broadcasting to explain its policies through fact-based journalism. Yet, after failing to silence the Voice of America, the taxpayer-funded independent international broadcaster, the Trump administration is transforming it into a government mouthpiece.

In doing so, the administration is not only breaking the law; it is handing Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing a strategic victory as they ramp up their own global influence operations. A shuttered VOA cedes the information space to America’s adversaries. A propagandistic VOA advances their disinformation campaigns and forfeits the trust of the 360 millionpeople who used to tune in to its broadcasts each week.

Current editorial priorities bear many of the characteristics of wartime propaganda, including at VOA Farsi, one of only six of VOA’s 49 language services brought back in a much-reduced capacity following legal action against the administration. Stories center on administration statements, often without opposing context. Recent articles highlight administration claims that oil prices are lower than before the war and that maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has been restored. Meanwhile, VOA suppressed coverage of civilian death tolls from U.S. airstrikes and barely mentioned the February bombing of the elementary school in Minab.

This reporting bears little resemblance to VOA’s journalism that until March 2025 was guided by the VOA Charter. This 1976 law enshrines editorial independence by mandating three things: VOA will serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news; VOA will represent America, not any single segment of American society; and VOA will present U.S. policies clearly and effectively, with responsible discussions and opinion on those policies.

That means covering U.S. military objectives and declarations of success alongside critics’ scrutiny of those claims, the war’s humanitarian consequences, and its cost to American taxpayers. Statements from the administration alongside lawmakers, analysts, activists, Trump supporters, and the majority of Americans who oppose the war. It also means including Tehran’s position, the voices of Iranian civilians and diaspora groups, international reactions, and the complex history of U.S.-Iran ties.

Little of that is evident in VOA’s reporting today.

Those steering the agency away from objective journalism may be tempted by what they see as an immediate payoff: making U.S. military operations appear more successful, and amplifying the president’s message. In reality, this approach undermines U.S. interests from the outset. Narratives that contradict audiences’ lived reality are unlikely to persuade them. Iranians feel the war’s impact in their daily lives. People across Africa and Asia feel it in their wallets.

Even if some are persuaded, any short-term messaging advantage would be outweighed by the broader loss of credibility. Once audiences see that VOA serves the administration rather than the truth, they are less likely to trust its reporting on anything else, whether it’s the war in Ukraine or Gaza, the earthquake response in Venezuela, even something as indisputable as World Cup scores.

This trust can only be sustained if VOA continues to produce journalism, not propaganda. Unlike Russian and Chinese state media which can broadcast their governments’ consistent political narratives, a U.S. broadcaster that echoes its administration may need to change its message every four years, sacrificing credibility every time.

The VOA Charter states: “The long-range interests of the United States are served by communicating directly with the peoples of the world...” This emphasis on long-range interests transcends administrations, and it has worked: more than 80 percent of VOA’s global audience found its reporting trustworthy.

“We shall tell you the truth.”

VOA made a promise to audiences in its first broadcast in 1942: “The news may be good for us. The news may be bad. But we shall tell you the truth.”

This has repeatedly proven to be the right course of action, even when the news is devastating. In March 2012, U.S. Staff Sergeant Robert Bales killed 16 Afghan civilians in a shooting spree in Kandahar. The killing, reported by VOA,made the area “a very difficult place to operate in,” said Jason Church, a retired U.S. Army Captain and Purple Heart recipient deployed in Afghanistan at the time. Yet, he views VOA’s coverage in Pashto, Dari, Urdu, Farsi and other languages of the region as essential, because without it the only message the people would hear is from “an angry [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai and the Taliban.”

Reporting bad news about the U.S. is not “anti-American,” as Project 2025 claimed in its chapter on USAGM. On the contrary, journalism that reflects a nation unafraid of scrutiny embodies the very best of American ideals. For more than eight decades, VOA reports about the U.S. carried an implicit message: a strong nation is one willing to tell the truth about itself. That message, more than any government talking point, has made VOA one of America’s most effective instruments of soft power that is too valuable to squander.

This commitment to truth – applying the same journalistic standards to every administration and every government including its own – is what distinguished VOA from state-controlled broadcasters such as China Media Group, Russia Today, and Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. RAND researchers describe RT’s approach as a “firehose of falsehood”: high-volume, repetitive messaging unconstrained by objective reality or consistency. Rather than persuading audiences through credibility, this model seeks to overwhelm the information environment, and erode trust by making the truth seem unknowable.

The RAND study also suggests that if audiences have already been primed with accurate information, disinformation becomes less persuasive. As outlined in the now-abandoned USAGM’s 2022-2026 Strategic Plan, that is precisely VOA’s goal: to be “extremely capable first responders in the current war on truth.”

Why abandon that goal? Turning VOA into a propaganda outlet will not help the administration control the narrative; it will only serve adversaries’ purpose of making all information seem unreliable. With a silenced VOA, the U.S. unilaterally disarms in the global information war. With a propagandistic VOA, it arms its adversaries.

This July marks the 50th anniversary of the VOA Charter. It is time to return to it.

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Patsy Widakuswara is a former VOA White House Bureau Chief and lead plaintiff against the administration’s attempt to dismantle the agency. The views expressed here are her own and do not reflect the views of her employer.

The premier alcohol permit dates to the moment the Twenty-first Amendment finally went into effect in the District of Columbia. At one minute past midnight on March 1, 1934, D.C. Commissioner George E. Allen, in a broadcast over radio station WJSV, handed the precious license to William C. Murphy, the president of the National Press Club. Immediately, Julius Reiners, the National Press Club’s manager, gave the nod to staff to open and serve a just-delivered case of MacNair’s Special Reserve Pure Scotch Whisky, according to a recent account written by investigative journalist Bill Hogan.

It had been a long dry spell. Since 1917, two years before nationwide prohibition had gone into effect, it had been illegal to have a drink in the nation’s capital. For many it was a technicality. Bootleg booze was widely available, including moonshine, bathtub gin and premium brands.

Bootleggers operated openly at the corner of 14th and Pennsylvania NW, across the street from police headquarters. One of the dealers’ clandestine pickup points was two blocks away in the shrubbery at the White House fence.

Members of Congress smuggled bottles back into the country from their overseas junkets, claiming immunity from baggage inspections. Many embassies used the diplomatic pouch and sold the contents (often refilled with lower quality libations) on the black market.

National alcohol prohibition in the United States grew out of nearly a century of temperance organizing that the Anti-Saloon League turned into a disciplined political machine, powerful enough to write its cause into the Constitution. But passing the Eighteenth Amendment proved easier than enforcing it and the fight over enforcement transformed the U.S. Supreme Court itself, producing the automobile exception to the warrant requirement, the first fight over wiretapping and privacy, and Chief Justice and former President William Howard Taft's sweeping reorganization of the federal judiciary.

Marijuana prohibition followed a very different path: no Constitutional amendment, just federal statute — which means the anti-commandeering doctrine lets states legalize what Washington still forbids, creating a patchwork where cannabis is legal under state law and illegal under federal law at the same time.

On this week’s episode of our radio show/podcast, America at 250: Due Diligence, historian Richard Hamm (SUNY Albany) explains how the temperance movement won after a century of failure. Yale Law School’s Robert C. Post traces how prohibition enforcement remade the Supreme Court's power and jurisprudence. And Vanderbilt University Professor of Law Robert Mikos lays out why marijuana federalism looks so different from alcohol's — and why he thinks federal legalization is inevitable.

No smoking of any kind is permitted inside the National Press Club. But on the sidewalk 13 stories below the Reliable Sources bar, the smell of cannabis is common in a city with licensed medical marijuana dispensaries and grey market outlets, not to mention the traditional street corner dealers. Possession is legal, although public consumption remains a criminal misdemeanor, usually resolved in the rare case of citation by payment of a $25 fine, reminiscent of the open defiance of Prohibition.

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The majority of its 56 signers were not able to ink the steer-hide parchment until early August, 1776. After that, faith and little else was placed with a Virginia plantation owner and his poorly trained and equipped recruits and conscripts to confront the Redcoats, American Tories, Hessian mercenaries, the so-called Ethiopian Regiment (runaway slaves), the Mohawks and several other Native tribes.

General George Washington’s troops were nearly defeated by two winters, let alone the world’s most powerful military infrastructure. It would take the ragtag revolutionaries seven years of fighting after the Declaration to get Great Britain to formally recognize American sovereignty and sign a peace treaty.

After that the weak confederation, heavily in debt to the French and Dutch, faced internal rebellion, encroaching Spanish forces on the lower Mississippi and the refusal of the supposedly vanquished British to vacate their forts in the Northwest Territory.

When the Constitution was ratified in 1788, the 13 states finally could stand up a skeletal federal government that eventually would foster periods of stability, economic growth and national security. The states retained significant power and the federal government, lacking funds and regulatory clout, was essentially a bystander as the largely agrarian society cautiously sought to develop interstate commerce and build infrastructure. That included canals, pipelines, dams, power plants and, by the 20th century, transmission lines.

In the fifth episode of our weekly radio program America at 250: Due Diligence, “Power Struggle: Energy, Climate, and the Future,” along with Bill Bernardoni, we examine the complexity of distributing electricity across a continent — something unimaginable to America’s founder (except perhaps for experimenter Benjamin Franklin, who coined electrical terms, such as battery, charge and conductor). But even Ben likely would have blown a circuit trying to grapple with rising demand, extreme weather, aging infrastructure, growing data centers and arguments over nuclear power, natural gas, renewable energy, property rights and government regulation.

To connect the wires we’ve brought on to the program several experts.

Historian Christopher F. Jones, author of Routes of Power, explains how infrastructure does more than respond to demand—it creates demand, benefits certain communities, imposes costs on others and limits the choices available decades later. He connects today’s disputes over data centers and artificial intelligence to earlier battles involving coal, oil, electrification, eminent domain and the communities asked to bear the environmental consequences of economic growth.

Former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff explains the federal government’s role in overseeing interstate transmission and wholesale electricity markets. He argues that meeting new demand will require expanded transmission, energy storage, distributed generation, demand-response programs and a larger role for consumers, businesses, batteries and electric vehicles in supporting the grid.

Travis Fisher of the Cato Institute offers a libertarian challenge to centralized energy planning. He warns that monopoly utilities, subsidies, eminent domain and unclear divisions of state and federal authority can shift costs and risks onto property owners and ordinary ratepayers. Fisher also discusses nuclear power, fossil fuels, climate regulation and whether large energy users should be allowed to build alternatives to the existing utility system.

While our three guests may disagree over how quickly the system should change and how much government should direct it, they concur that electricity is not just another commodity. It is essential infrastructure, a public-safety concern and a source of enormous economic and political power.

In an ironic moment during the interview with Wellinghoff, who was in Reno, for which I was in the studio in my Virginia home, the power went off.

A thunderstorm with gusty winds brought down trees which fell on Dominion Energy’s electrical poles about a mile away. This scenario is repeated several times annually (and the outages can last for days). The utility ignores the pleas from our neighborhood and local officials to bury the lines, claiming that at a cost of a million bucks a mile the few hundreds customers on our Potomac River peninsula are not worth it.

It is worth noting the company, which powers the world’s largest data center market in northern Virginia, recently agreed to sell itself to one of its power generation competitors (NextEra Energy) for $67 billion.

I have partially declared my independence from Dominion with rooftop solar panels but no storage system. A universal power supply instantly protected my studio equipment until the outdoor generator kicked in 15 seconds later. I am prepared for the frequent outages and can function off the grid for up to a week with our 500-gallon propane tank to fuel the 18-kilowatt generator. I count myself not only prepared, but fortunate, aware that for the majority of Americans this sort of resilience (an investment of tens of thousands of dollars) is not practical nor affordable.

As much of the nation sweats under a heat dome on this 4th of July and the three major U.S. grids struggle to meet demand, the question we are really asking on our program’s episode is: Can power to the people ensure power for the people?

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America@250: Due Diligence is our non-partisan, non-commercial program and podcast that we’re fortunate to have airing on dozens of radio stations across the United States. It is made possible by a few civic-minded contributors to the Jordan Center of Journalism Advocacy and Innovation, the support of the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi and distributed via Talk Media Network, the Public Radio Exchange and the Radio Free America project.

If you like what we’re doing with the radio show and podcast, we would appreciate your grassroots support by clicking here.

That is why I ensured that our limited-run weekly one-hour program, America@250: Due Diligence, which many listen to as an online podcast, not only airs on FM radio (including WRCT in Pittsburgh), but also on dozens of AM stations, as well as the most powerful shortwave radio broadcaster in the United States, WRMI, as a service of Radio Free America. Our fifth episode will run this weekend and more on that here on Saturday.

My career in journalism and broadcasting in no small part stems from my avocation as a shortwave listener and then a licensed amateur radio operator (currently W7DQ).

Back in the day, the airwaves between 10 and 160 meters were filled with distant signals, many enrolled in an ideological battle. There were the propaganda stations behind the Iron Curtain, the popular talk and music programs targeting Asia and Africa on Deutsche Welle, Radio Ceylon, RFE/RL and VOA; pirate stations in international waters playing rock music banned on the BBC; time and frequency markers; air traffic control for trans-oceanic flights; radar pulses (such as the infamous Russian ‘woodpecker,’ designed to detect over-the-horizon ballistic middle launches); clandestine stations in the jungles trying to overthrow governments or offering an alternative to repressive state-control media.

There were also, of course, the ham radio signals (the sideband voices sounding like Donald Duck on AM radios). The most tantalizing transmissions were the “numbers stations.” These mysterious broadcasts, voiced or in Morse code, were clearly in the realm of military intelligence or espionage. MI6 had the ‘Lincolnshire Poacher,’ Cuba’s DGI ran ‘Atencion.’ Moscow still sounds the ‘Buzzer’ (Жужжалка), which is always on 4625 kHz.

In one of my ham radio online chat groups on Wednesday, (the Long Island CW Club, of which I’m an honorary life member), a fellow amateur in Canada, Chris, whose call sign is VE3RWJ, notes his interception of a prolific numbers station about which there is a modicum of reliable information. The station has a legitimate call sign 4XZ (not to be confused with a rap musician using the same moniker).

4XZ (the station, not the rapper) is operated by the Israeli navy out of Haifa and sends Morse code (CW or continuous wave) transmissions around the clock, simultaneously on several frequencies.

Monitors report 4XZ delivers as many as 900 messages monthly, consisting of five-letter groups with a dozen or so new messages daily but more when naval exercises take place. It previously would also broadcast weather bulletins. Monitors note that each item of the traffic list consists of the recipient call sign (letter, letter, digit, letter), the message number, a two-letter code of unknown purpose and the group count. All digit sequences in 4XZ are written in reverse order (Hebrew is written right-to-left).

Chris in Canada, an accomplished CW operator and active member of the Blind Hams Digital Net, writes about his interception of 4XZ sending test messages on 10 mHz, which even a novice in radio communications knows is a terrible choice because that’s the frequency used continuously by time signal stations WWV (Colorado) and WWVH (Hawaii), operated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), part of the Department of Commerce. To put it succinctly, an Israeli military radio station appears to be causing worldwide interference to a U.S. government radio station.

Chris noticed the 4XZ transmission does not appear to be automated, but rather the Morse Code is being tapped out by a sloppy telegrapher.

“Anyone know why the sending is lopsided? Is that a (semi-automatic) bug? A straight key? I’m curious to know why the code isn’t more even,” Chris asks.

These numbers stations are deliberately low key, so to speak, as they exist in a shadowy world. Sending sloppy CW on top of two of the world’s most recognized shortwaves stations (WWV and WWVH) is not a clandestine action. Is this a deliberate provocation? A rogue corporal messing around or accidentally running a test on the wrong frequency? Another possibility — a mischievous imposter trying to dupe us into believing it’s the Israelis.

These kind of mysteries excited me as a young shortwave listener and they are still intriguing decades later.

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For more than two centuries, Americans have been arguing about what those 27 words mean — in courtrooms, in statehouses, in campaign ads and on the streets.

The fight is not just about guns. The are questions of liberty versus public safety, individual rights and democratic government, what the Constitution meant in 1791 and what it can mean in a country with weapons the founders could not have imagined. We are a country with 400+ million firearms in civilian hands. A country where gun violence is now the leading cause of death among children and teenagers. A country still working out, case by case, where one of its foundational rights ends and the government’s interest in safety begins.

The modern legal landscape begins with District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008, when the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense — overturning nearly two centuries of jurisprudence that had centered the right on the organized militia.

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Fourteen years later, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen raised the stakes further, instructing courts to evaluate the constitutionality of gun laws not by weighing their public safety benefits, but by asking whether they are consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation. And in 2026, Virginia became the latest front in that fight, enacting one of the most significant state-level assault weapons bans in the country — drawing immediate legal challenges from gun rights groups and setting up a confrontation that may reach the Supreme Court. (A Lancaster County Circuit Court judge has granted a preliminary injunction just days before the ban was supposed to take effect.)

This is the topic of the fourth episode of the radio program/podcast America at 250: Due Diligence, a production of the University of Mississippi’s Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy and Innovation. Co-host Bill Bernardoni and I question three guests with distinct vantage points about the Second Amendment:

Professor Joseph Blocher, who is the co-founder and faculty director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. walks us through the legal architecture from the founding era through those recent landmark Supreme Court cases, including the uncomfortable racial history embedded in originalist jurisprudence.

We also discuss the issue with a Virginia state delegate and combat veteran, Dan Helmer, who spent seven years pushing an assault weapons ban. He explains what it took to get it done — and what his time under fire in Iraq and Afghanistan taught him about the weapons involved in the commonwealth’s decision.

Stephen P. Halbrook, a constitutional attorney who has argued Second Amendment cases before Supreme Court, makes the case that the Virginia law, like every other assault weapons ban, is unconstitutional — and that the most popular rifle in America is firmly on the protected side of the line Congress drew in 1934.

You can listen to our thorough discussion on the top podcast platforms (such as Apple, iHeart, Podcast Addict or Spotify ). It is also airing this weekend on dozens of radio stations across the country and being beamed throughout the continent on Radio Free America via WRMI’s powerful shortwave transmitters.

We hope you’ll tune in.

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The desired reception target, on a NNE compass bearing mapped on a straight line, is 63 kilometers (39 miles) away — the 215-meter high tower in Bethesda, Maryland, from which WTTG sends out a one megawatt (effective radiated power) signal in the 600 MHz band. My elevation is about 38 meters (125 feet) HAAT which is really not high enough for the goal (no pun intended) because of the curvature of the Earth and multiple ridges between my house in Stafford County, Virginia, and southern Montgomery County in Maryland.

In the analog days on much lower frequencies it would have been easy to get at least a slightly snowy picture but with digital it boils down to ones and zeroes, i.e. all or nothing. Televes claims its best antenna has 31 dBi gain for reception on the desired UHF channel, but physics demands that I further elevate the antenna for a reliable picture. (There’s a handy formula for this: 𝜈=ℎ2𝜆1𝑑1+1𝑑2)

After a few days of testing, I have noticed that the WTTG (aka Fox 5) video pixelates more in the daytime than after sunset.

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My semi-educated guess is a regular temperature inversion is at play. At night the broadcast signal curves slightly over ridges, hills and the horizon, bringing a strong, pixelation-free picture. Solar heat destroys the inversion and the signal during the daytime resumes its normal, straight line-of-sight path and that, unfortunately, means it shoots straight into the ridges or over my antenna.

It is also possible that during the day there are more aircraft in the path. A big flying object could cause brief multi-path interference which briefly tears apart the received video image. I queried Gemini AI about this and it did not respond with laughter and insults but rather helpfully generated a simulation.

My caveat is these are unproven theories. I report sometimes about science, but am not a scientist, only a certified amateur radio licensee (W7DQ) with the stress on amateur.

Another factor could be interference from 5G cellular just adjacent to the frequencies used by WTTG. The included Televes Datboss LTE/5G filter is supposed to compensate for this while the preamplifier does its magic.

Yes, I know I am spending a lot of time and effort when I could plunk down $20 for a Fox One subscription and cancel it after the World Cup is over. I do have limited access to Peacock (under NBCUniversal), which its owner, Comcast, has given me as a perk as part of my Xfinity internet service. It works fine on my cell phone but rejects access on my internet-connected TV set, presumably because that is on my Verizon Fios wi-fi connection. (Yes, I have two different ISPs for my primary residence).

Peacock carries most of the World Cup matches on Telemundo and I prefer the star-studded team of Spanish-language announcers over the Anglo-American commentary on Fox as it’s jarring to hear the word “soccer” during the World Cup. For Team USA it might be “soccer,” but for every other team, except the Japanese, on the pitch here this month it is some variation of “football.”

I can sometimes get the Telemundo stream from my iPhone to hand off to the TV set and, voilà, mission accomplished.

The Televes antenna will have to go higher. I am sensible enough at my age (in the zone between maturity and doddering) not to carry a large and unwieldy object across my steep roof and I do not want any friends or neighbors doing that either. Just as the number of professional transmission tower climbers has dwindled in recent decades it is difficult to find anyone whose livelihood is erecting rooftop residential antennas or satellite dishes as most households have switched to cable TV or the internet, if they even still watch television at home. Diehards over the age of 21 who want to see the action on a big screen find the sports bar most convenient. But that ends up doing damage to the wallet, if not the liver.

It is disheartening to watch most sporting events disappear behind paywalls. Even if willing to pay for the services it is difficult to find which games are being carried by which services. As more of the media and entertainment giants merge the paywalls will rise higher. It was once affordable for middle income earners to attend a few major league events annually, even if that meant sitting in the nosebleed section. Being a virtual fan is also getting out of reach for the majority.

A Live Sports Viewership report finds that American households now spend an average of $1,475 per year to keep up with live sports with 84% of consumers still paying for primary TV (cable, satellite, or live TV streaming) and 71% layering on additional standalone sports streaming apps to catch all the games for their specific teams or leagues.

Independent sports journalist Joon Lee has repeatedly criticized the fractured broadcast schedule and the number of streaming services required to watch a single team's season (such as needing NBA TV plus a regional streaming subscription). He has calculated it costs $4,785 annually to be a sports fan. That figure includes a ticket for one NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL game; two jerseys and two hats; cable TV and high-speed internet; subscriptions for Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, HBO (or whatever it is called this week), Paramount and Peacock. (Joon’s total does not take into consideration that some ballparks and arenas now charge $8 for a hot dog.)

The cost, in reality, is higher if you also have a predilection for televised college sports (which I prefer over pro games).

After factoring the cost of my fancy TV aerial and a fully-insured handyman to secure it on the roof, I will still save hundreds of dollars annually — even if I watch only one sporting event per week.

Stay tuned.

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In our third episode of America at 250: Due Diligence, co-host Bill Bernardoni and I take a deep look at federalism: the founders’ bet that you could build a government strong enough to hold a nation together while keeping it accountable enough not to swallow it whole.

The extended podcast version of the latest episode is now online on the major platforms (Amazon, Apple, iHeart, Pocketcasts and Spotify to list a few), as well as beaming internationally this weekend on the Radio Free America transmissions via WRMI on shortwave. A slightly shorter AM/FM broadcast version airs throughout the week on 80 radio stations across the country, including WRCT in Pittsburgh.

Georgetown University constitutional law professor Randy Barnett explains why the framers of the Constitution built a “compound republic” of competing sovereignties, what James Madison (originally quite the nationalist), who would become our fourth president, wanted and didn’t get, and how President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal rewrote the rules in ways that still govern us today.

I sat in a studio at WUMS Radio to interview University of Mississippi political science and African American Studies professor Marvin King to examine what happens when states are trusted with rights they have historically denied. From the 15th Amendment to the recently hollowed-out Voting Rights Act to the landmark 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision Shelby County v. Holder, Dr. King traces the gap between constitutional promise and lived reality — and asks a question worth pondering: without federal intervention (twice), when would Black citizens in Mississippi have voted?

Manhattan Institute constitutional lawyer and Supreme Disorder author Ilya Shapiro closes with a different concern — a federal government he argues has expanded so far beyond its enumerated powers that a Cleveland-area Little Caesar’s pizza shop robbery becomes a federal case under the interstate commerce clause. His prescription: a gradual rollback of accumulated federal authority and a return of real governing to the states.

Three guests, three entry points, one argument America has been having since 1787. This episode of America at 250: Due Diligence is not intended to settle it, but rather give listeners what they need to think it through.

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Our acclaimed and unique limited-run (through the end of this year) radio program and podcast is made possible due to several generous individual philanthropists, as well as support from the Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy and Innovation and our home base, the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi. We do not accept money from any special interest groups for the programming.

Also, we do not charge radio stations to air the program and podcast subscriptions are free to achieve the widest possible audience. That said, since the program’s production and distribution incur a deficit, we encourage grassroots contributions.

The feedback we’ve received so far is encouraging and comments from some listeners note they do not agree with some of the positions taken by the guests, but they will continue to tune in. That is precisely what we hoped for and expected.

America@250 does not cater to the confirmation biases, meaning we avoid a bias to entice any one side of the deeply divided political spectrum. We feel it is important for the audience to hear from educated and articulate experts on different sides of a debate without rancor. America’s founders, for the most part, took a similar view and that led to the successful adoption of the United States Constitution and the initial 10 amendments enshrined in the Bill of Rights. The approached worked 250 years ago and we would like to extend it a little longer.

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Mason’s insistence on a state-led process became the second amendment pathway of Article V. It was designed as a vital safety valve—a check against a federal government that refused to check itself. Yet, in the nearly 250 years of American history since that summer, this mechanism has never been used. In the years beyond America’s semiquincentennial, that might change.

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In our second episode of the radio program and podcast America at 250: Due Diligence, my co-host, Bill Bernardoni, and I delve into one of this consequential—and little understood—provision in our founding document and questions our guests about whether it’s time to call America’s first-ever Article V Convention.

Right now, this unused constitutional mechanism is at the center of a political movement. The Convention of States project, which New York magazine contends is funded by millions of dollars of right-wing dark money, says it has already successfully organized 20 states behind a push to convene a convention. Its goal? To bypass Washington and impose fiscal restraints, term limits and jurisdictional boundaries on the federal government.

Supporters argue this is exactly the moment George Mason foresaw. Critics, including some conservatives, warn that an Article V convention is a legal “pig in a poke”—an unpredictable process with no established rules for who attends, what they can change or how it could be stopped once the doors close.

To unpack the history, the strategy and what’s at stake, we have included a trio of distinct, authoritative voices who answer our questions about whether we are looking at a brilliantly designed constitutional safeguard or a loophole so dangerous it has remained untouched for two and a half centuries:

• David A. Super, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law and Economics at Georgetown University Law Center, who details the deep legal uncertainties surrounding a convention’s scope and ratification process.

• Mark Meckler, co-founder and president of Convention of States Action, who is leading the nationwide, grassroots campaign to trigger the convention.

• Russ Feingold, former U.S. Senator from Wisconsin and co-author of The Constitution in Jeopardy, who lays out why he believes this effort poses an unprecedented danger to our fundamental law.

You can listen to “The Key To The Cage: Is It Time For An Article V Convention?“ right now on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Audible, iHeartRadio, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you value the deep-dives and historical context we bring to America at 250: Due Diligence, please support the program by subscribing (it’s free), downloading the episode and sharing it. You can directly support our non-partisan, non-profit programming by making a contribution to the Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy and Innovation at the University of Mississippi School of Journalism and New Media On your smart phone there’s a direct donation link via this QR code:

As America turns 250, do you think Article V’s convention clause is a safeguard the founders got right, a loophole too dangerous to use or something that needs to be reformed before anyone calls a convention? Join the conversation and send us your thoughts via RadioFreeAmerica.media.

Our program distribution is growing and has now been picked up by more than 80 AM and FM radio stations in the United States. We’re also heard well beyond the borders of this country with Radio Free America shortwave transmissions via the powerful transmitters of WRMI from Florida at 00:00 GMT (that’s EDT +4) Saturdays on 9455 kHz (beaming to North America), as well as Sundays at 00:00 GMT on 5050 kHz (Latin America) and 9395 kHz (North America). Some of those broadcasts also stream online.

We’re back next week with Episode 3 of America at 250: Due Diligence, titled “State of Control.”

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As the United States celebrates the semiquincentennial—the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence do not take for granted our telecommunications system, far different from how our earliest citizens heard from the influencers of their time.

In the late 18th century, political arguments moved at the speed of a galloping horse or a coastal sailing vessel. If you wanted to reach the public, you couldn’t book studio time on Fox News or CNN or issue a Substack posting; you went to a printer to make a pamphlet. These were cherished leaflets; deep, focused essays, cheap to produce and intended to be passed from hand to hand. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense became the ultimate disruptor of 1776 precisely because it bypassed elite salons and spoke directly to the public in plain language. For shorter, immediate announcements, printers produced broadsides—large, single-sheet papers tacked to tavern walls, town hall doors and the courthouse steps.

Then there were the weekly newspapers. Printers in Boston, Philadelphia and New York regularly swapped news copy and opinion pieces. An essay published in New England would be physically carried south, reprinted by a local shop in Virginia weeks later and disseminated to a different audience.

Because hand-press technology limited the physical number of copies available, the true reach of this media relied on an “access multiplier.” Literacy rates were high for the era, but highly stratified. In New England, an estimated 85% to 90% of white males were literate, thanks to a dense network of local schools. In the Middle and Southern states, that number dropped to between 60% and 70%. For white women, literacy hovered around 40% to 50%, while laws and brutal social practice kept literacy among enslaved and free African Americans below 10%.

Yet, a lack of reading ability didn’t mean a lack of access.

The town tavern and the local coffeehouse served as the actual broadcast studios of the Founding Era. A single copy of a newspaper or pamphlet wasn’t read silently over morning coffee; it was read aloud to a packed room of patrons, sparking immediate, face-to-face debate. Scholars estimate that every piece of print media was heard by or shared among five to ten people. In an era without microphones, the public square was loud, communal and highly participatory.

Perhaps the greatest testament to the power of this print network was the ratification debate over the U.S. Constitution itself. Between October 1787 and August 1788, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay waged a massive, sophisticated public relations campaign. Writing under the collective pseudonym “Publius,” they produced 85 essays that we now know as The Federalist Papers.

Their distribution strategy was a tactical masterclass. They didn’t target a national audience all at once. Instead, they wrote specifically for the highly partisan New York newspapers to influence a critical anti-Federalist stronghold before the state’s ratifying convention. From there, Federalist-aligned printers syndicated the essays across the 13 states. By the spring of 1788, the essays were compiled into a two-volume bound book set titled The Federalist, effectively giving delegates across the country an authoritative, weaponized debate handbook.

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This network of deep accountability and public examination is what we seek to explore and emulate with America@250: Due Diligence.

This past weekend marked the initial broadcasts of this 60-minute public affairs radio show and podcast that I am co-hosting and co-producing alongside syndicated radio host Bill Bernardoni.

Our premise is straightforward: a milestone anniversary like a 250th birthday means very little without a clear-eyed, rigorous accounting of where the country stands. We eschew the standard talk show “hot takes” and name-calling to look at the foundational questions that have defined—and divided—American democracy from the beginning.

In our inaugural episode, we ponder a question that traces its lineage directly back to the debates between Hamilton and Madison: What does the government owe the people it serves?

Though the end of this year, once a week, we will bring together leading historians, former lawmakers and policy experts. We’ll ask questions, allowing the guests to have their say without cutting them off in mid-sentence. You will hear views you may agree with, those that you certainly do not and some which you won’t be certain.

The goal of the show is not to convince you of a singular point of view, rather to discuss the different viewpoints (and not just bring them up as straw men) while adding historical context so that you can make up your own mind and be a better informed participant in our 250-year-old experiment in democracy.

The show itself is certainly a tiny part of that experiment. In some ways, it is very different than anything else out there on the radio. We’re not chasing ratings. We’re not trying to sell you anything. The show is funded by private donations (“listeners like you”) for the most part, we have no direct advertisers although the commercial radio stations airing the program can insert spots and the podcast platforms through which we’re distributed might add announcements. It’s an undertaking as part of the Newslab of the Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy and Innovation at the University of Mississippi’s School of Journalism and News Media, in cooperation with the Radio Free America™ project.

You won’t hear blatant partisan opinion from either of the hosts. We’ll let the guests do that, if they want, as long as it adds context to the discussion.

We are also distributing the episodes via a variety of platforms, some of which cater to public and independent broadcasters (skewing to the left presumably), others whose affiliates are mostly MAGA talk radio stations and smaller groups where Christian programming is the norm. I expect one common response from our new listeners across the spectrum will be, “well, this is certainly different.” Some may decide they don’t want to hear presentations outside their confirmation bubble. But, hopefully, others are more open-minded.

I don’t know what should be the benchmark to declare our experiment a success. We have about 70 stations in 21 states (hey, more than the original 13)! That is above my initial expectations.

While most U.S. radio stations have music formats, sports talk, foreign language or target other niche audiences, that still leaves thousands of signals across the country where there might be an hour to spare for America@250. Arguably, there’s very little on the radio that still serves the “public interest.”

Of course, the great democratizer in our century for getting the aural word out is the podcast. We’re on all the top platforms. Please have a listen and subscribe to the show (it’s free) on Apple or Spotify.

Since I spent much of my career involved with it, I am big believer in the power of radio, although I got into the podcast habit when I first was alerted to Mike Duncan’s The History of Rome and I’m currently catching up on Season 2 of The New Yorker’s In the Dark, which takes place in Mississippi.

As I write this comes word that WLPR-FM is coming onboard this week. The non-commercial public radio stations serves the Chicago market’s eastern reaches, focusing on northwest Indiana. This gives us a voice in three important Hoosier counties: Lake, Porter and LaPorte, that exemplify a cross-section of American politics. In Lake, while the cities of Gary and Hammond are Democratic Party strongholds, the southern part of the county leans conservative. Porter is a highly competitive swing county. And LaPorte is considered a bellwether that leans Republican.

Something else contrarian we’ve done is to get America@250 on shortwave radio. Many Americans would probably have to go into the attic to find a receiver to pick up the high frequencies but there are still enthusiasts. And you can also change the dial on one of the growing number of shortwave digital receivers publicly-accessible on the internet. I have just placed a KiwiSDR-2 receiver online and it’s literally on the map.

There were several additional bonus broadcasts on shortwave this weekend via WRMI (Radio Miami International), in addition to the initial airings which had a technical glitch due to a computer scheduling error.

Reception reports indicate strong signals (S9 or S9+) from the weekend shortwave broadcasts from Vermont to Missouri. It was somewhat weaker reception (static and fading) in other states and no known reception in the Pacific Northwest where it was too early in the day for favorable propagation on 5050 and 9395 kHz. (Shortwave reception can be a crap shoot based on time of day, sunspots, solar flares and transmission frequencies).

For kicks, I monitored some of the remote receivers in other countries and reception of the show was decent in a bunch of countries (strongest in the Caribbean, Argentina, Chile, Iceland, Portugal, Spain, Denmark and Italy). It is a bit strange to hear one’s own voice talking back to yourself, knowing it has traveled from Florida, bounced off the ionosphere, was received in Europe and then sent back through satellites and fiber cables (aka the internet path) to one’s home.

We don’t have a lot of listener comments yet, but here’s what has been relayed to me or found online:

This was a good broadcast, a history of America’s slow-building safety net and the republican efforts to wreck it.

Wonderful show - I feel like I’m listening to the old VOA again.

A good drilldown into the United States at 250.

Great concept.

Yes, I agree wholeheartedly with that last one.

Once you have had a listen, please send us your feedback. And if you would like to contribute to the making of the program so it can stay on-air and online through the end of this year, there a contribution link, as well.

And just like those pamphlets in the 18th century, you can certainly pass this along to someone else.

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The public service program will put into historical context key Constitutional issues being debated in American society with experts from across the political spectrum as featured guests.

The program will be co-hosted by two broadcast veterans, Steven L Herman, who is executive director of the Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy and Innovation at the University of Mississippi, and Illinois-based radio talk show producer Bill Bernardoni.

Herman is a former White House bureau chief of the Voice of America. Bernardoni’s background includes work as a campaign manager and political consultant for candidates from the state to national level.

“At a time when discourse on our airwaves is often dominated by the desire to divide, America @ 250: Due Diligence offers a refreshing remedy rooted in deep research, historical context and civil conversation,” said Dr. Andrea Hickerson, dean of the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi. “The program fosters discussion to expand civic literacy to create a more informed electorate.”

America @ 250: Due Diligence will begin airing on about 50 AM and FM radio stations from the first weekend in June with distribution via Talk Media Network, the Public Radio Exchange (PRX), the Radio Free America™ project and commercial shortwave broadcaster WRMI-Radio Miami.

“There are few issues-oriented or public affairs radio programs independently produced that are free of intended political bias,” said Herman, formally announcing the launch of the program in a presentation here on Thursday at the annual meeting of the National Association of Shortwave Broadcasters. “We hope more radio stations with a sincere interest in objectively informing the electorate will carry the program.”

America @ 250: Due Diligence will continue through the end of this Semiquincentennial year and a weekly online extended version will be on podcast distribution platforms.

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