Prior events teach us lessons for our decisions today.

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A short newsletter this week – out of town visiting family, so a little less time to write. Certainly, the news is constant, compelling, and relevant.

Supreme Court Intervenes

Regarding a class of detainees seeking an injunction against their removal under the Alien Enemies Act, the Supreme Court weighed in this weekend, directing the Trump Administration “not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court.” [1]

A lecture to the U.S. Naval Academy on censorship was censored

From reporting by CNN’s Natasha Bertrand: [2]

The US Naval Academy canceled a lecture that author Ryan Holiday was scheduled to give to students there last week after he refused to remove slides from his planned presentation that criticized the academy’s decision to remove nearly 400 books from its main library.
Holiday, a writer and philosopher who has lectured at the US Naval Academy more than half a dozen times since 2019, told CNN on Saturday that he was invited by the academy in November to give a lecture about wisdom to midshipmen on April 14. He had previously spoken to students there, including during the first Trump administration, as part of a series on stoicism and the pursuit of virtue and excellence.
But an hour before he was scheduled to give his talk last week, as he was getting ready in his hotel room in Annapolis, Holiday says he received a call from the school asking him if he could refrain from mentioning the academy’s decision earlier this month to remove 381 books from the shelves of its Nimitz Library.
“I said I couldn’t do that,” Holiday recalled. “I couldn’t have spoken in front of these midshipmen about courage and about doing the right thing, and then remove, I think, a very reasonable objection to a very egregious concept.”

Here is a gift link to Holiday’s New York Times editorial titled “The Naval Academy Canceled My Lecture on Wisdom.” [3]

Lexington and Concord

Five half-centuries ago, Americans started its remarkable journey of independent self-governance. Brave Patriot riders, most famous among them Paul Revere, took to the countryside to warn of British troop movements. The next day, the “shot heard round the world” [4] was fired in the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

Heather Cox Richardson is an American historian who works as a professor of history at Boston College, where she teaches courses on the American Civil War, the Reconstruction Era, the American West, and the Plains Indians. She writes a daily blog – Letters from an American - and her April 18, 2025, post is worth reading yourself. [5]

In a recent speech, she detailed the events that led to Revere’s famous ride and spoke of those who each did their part, including two people critical to the Old North Church’s place in history: Revere’s childhood friend John Pulling Jr., who had become a wealthy sea captain and was a vestryman, responsible for the church’s finances, and the church’s relatively poor caretaker, or sexton, Robert Newman. Richardson ended her speech with the following:

The work of Newman and Pulling to light the lanterns exactly 250 years ago tonight sounds even less heroic. They agreed to cross through town to light two lanterns in a church steeple. It sounds like such a very little thing to do, and yet by doing it, they risked imprisonment or even death. It was such a little thing…but it was everything. And what they did, as with so many of the little steps that lead to profound change, was largely forgotten until Henry Wadsworth Longfellow used their story to inspire a later generation to work to stop tyranny in his own time.
What Newman and Pulling did was simply to honor their friendships and their principles and to do the next right thing, even if it risked their lives, even if no one ever knew. And that is all anyone can do as we work to preserve the concept of human self-determination. In that heroic struggle, most of us will be lost to history, but we will, nonetheless, move the story forward, even if just a little bit.
And once in a great while, someone will light a lantern—or even two—that will shine forth for democratic principles that are under siege, and set the world ablaze.

You should read it yourself – I absolutely cannot do it justice…

Local Democracy

In California, “all political power is inherent in the people.” [6] Self-governance requires that any system of transferring political power from the people to decision makers is open, free, and fair. Such open, free, and fair elections validate the transfer of this power from the people to elected officials. While these officials represent the interests of the people in public decision making, they do not have the legitimate authority to grant power to others on their own; in self-government, this is reserved to the people.

While we discuss who can vote, how the votes are counted, and even the right to vote itself, there is an implicit assumption to all of this: that we hold elections at all. The creativeness of human decision making is not limited merely to manipulating the rules by which elections are held, but to rationalize whether or not to hold elections.

We should continually remind ourselves that American democracy wasn’t won hundreds of years ago with no further battles in which to engage; it’s an ideal that we must continually choose to embrace as the best form of self-governance and that we instill these values in our future generations.

In America, elected officials should be elected. However, at the local level, those in power have sometimes chosen not to hold elections.

And this has happened. Multiple times. In the same modern American city. In the 21st century. It took a law in that city to guarantee that elections are held.

Thousand Oaks is a relatively new American city, incorporating in the 1960s at a time of rapid growth in the Southern California region. It started from humble Western beginnings, serving as a backdrop for Hollywood’s “Golden Age,” and eventually became home to the global biotech giant Amgen and over 125,000 residents.

Local Democracy in America is a three-part series on American & Californian democracy viewed through the local lens of one modern American city. We visit three episodes in Thousand Oaks history, where the ideals of American democracy gave way to anti-democratic tendencies for keeping power.

The Integrity of Elections: In 1994, a month before the November election, the City Council majority tried to influence the outcome officially, passing a pre-election resolution “endorsing and urging” that the newly constituted Council appoint the next highest vote-getter to any vacancy if it occurs, but only under a complicated set of conditions.
The Right to Vote: In 2005 and 2012, the City Council majority refused to hold elections to fill Council vacancies, “handpick[ing] like-minded members in order to keep and expand their political power.” [7] It took a voter-initiated law to prevent this from ever happening again.
The Meaning of Representation: In 2021, the School Board filled a recent board vacancy through appointment, even though timing allowed for a November election to have been held. Yet, on a board represented by trustees from different areas, these members took it upon themselves to select the vacant area’s representative. What does representation mean when others except those represented select the representative?

And in all cases, the cost of holding an election was used to justify why no election should be held at all.

Local Democracy in America is available for Kindle pre-order now and will be released this Tuesday, April 22. A print version in paperback is being prepared and will be available soon.

A Little (Revolutionary) History

Marking the Semiquincentennial of American Independence 250 years ago

April 21, 1775 – The Gunpowder Incident

In early 1775, Virginians were forming local militias and securing supplies to arm them. It was well known that the British had sent circular letters to royal governors instructing them to seize any munitions and even preventing elections for a second Continental Congress. [8].

On April 21, 1775, Lord Dunmore, the Royal Governor of the Colony of Virginia, ordered the removal of the gunpowder from the magazine in Williamsburg, Virginia, to a Royal Navy ship. Patrick Henry led a small militia force toward Williamsburg to force return of the gunpowder to the colony's control. The matter was resolved without conflict when a payment of £330 was made to Henry, who promised to buy more gunpowder with the money. Dunmore, fearing for his personal safety, later retreated to a naval vessel, ending royal control of the colony. [9]

Narratives

The book I’m reading or movie I’m watching

“Andor” - on Disney+

[Re-upping this Narrative because the first three episodes of Season 2 drop on April 22]

In an era filled with danger, deception, and intrigue, Cassian Andor embarks on a path that is destined to turn him into a Rebel hero. [10]

This 12-episode Star Wars story is part of the Star Wars franchise and a prequel to the film Rogue One (2016), which in turn is a prequel to the original Star Wars film (1977). The series follows thief-turned-rebel spy Cassian Andor during the five years that lead to the events of the two films, exploring how he becomes radicalized against the Galactic Empire and how the wider Rebel Alliance is formed. [11]

I’m a huge Star Wars fan, and for me, this is the best of the entire genre. It has great characters, action, and messaging about resistance against tyranny. The struggle between freedom and tyranny is an ever-present human story, and Tony Gilroy does an amazing job with the storylines, richness, and complexity of the story.

GIF Game

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (writing as then-U.S. District Court Judge in *Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives v. McGahn II*) [12]

Notes and Sources

[1] A.A.R.P. et al. V. Trump, President of U.S., et al., 24A1007, 604 U.S. _____ (2025), https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/041925zr_c18e.pdf

[2] Natasha Bertrand, “US Naval Academy canceled author’s lecture that would have criticized book bans,” CNN, April 19, 2025, https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/19/politics/us-naval-academy-canceled-authors-lecture-book-bans/index.html

[3] Ryan Holiday, “The Naval Academy Canceled My Lecture on Wisdom,” New York Times, April 19, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/19/opinion/naval-academy-speech-censorship.html?unlocked_article_code=1.A08.nQnY.BC6IDyqfZs0F

[4] This phrase comes from the opening stanza of Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1837 poem "Concord Hymn’

[5] Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from An American, April 18, 2025, https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-18-2025

[6] California Constitution, Article II, Section 1.

[7] Ordinance No. 1580-NS, Thousand Oaks City Council, adopted July 17, 2012.

[8] John E Selby and Don Higginbotham, Don (2007). The Revolution in Virginia, 1775–1783, Williamsburg, VA, p 1-6.

[9] Ibid.

[10] “Andor,” IMDB, retrieved March 16, 2025, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9253284/

[11] “Andor (TV Series),” Wikipedia, retrieved March 16, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andor_(TV_series)

[12] Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives v. McGahn II, No. 1:2019-cv-02379 - Document 46 (D.D.C. 2019)), https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2019cv2379-46

Decisions with Mic Farris

Seek Truth. Honor Differences.

Short History Lessons