The Air India tragedy in Ahmedabad is the first time a Boeing 787 Dreamliner has crashed.
While airlines using the Boeing plane have had widespread problems with engines on the 787 plane, leaving many having to ground planes and reduce flights, the 787’s safety record in service has been so far good.
However, the US safety regulator the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has had to investigate several concerns over the years, including a mid-air dive on a LATAM flight last year.
A whistleblower last year also urged Boeing to ground all 787 Dreamliners worldwide, in Washington hearings. Boeing rejected the claims by the former engineer and said it was fully confident in the plane.
There are more than 1,100 787s in service worldwide, used by most major international airlines. The model has been prized for its far better fuel efficiency and lower noise than the types it replaced.
The two major crashes that were due to faults on Boeing planes were using the then new 737 Max model, in Indonesia and Ethiopia in 2019 and 2020. That model taken out of service for almost a year, before being relaunched and returned to widespread use.
India’s aviation safety history has been chequered, but as the airline industry has boomed and passenger flying has become more and more common, its safety record has improved.
Air India now operates about 30 Dreamliners, and has been using the American-built long-haul plane since 2012.
In aviation, crashes are statistically most likely on landing or take off. According to flight tracking information on Flightradar24, the plane had taken off and reached a height of 625 feet.
The last Air India crash, in August 2020, was on a smaller Boeing 737-800 Air India Express that was landing back at Calicut airport in very bad weather and skidded off the runway.
A Boeing spokesperson said:
We are aware of initial reports and are working to gather more information.
A few months ago, it seemed obvious that the biggest story of Donald Trump’s second term as president was Elon Musk becoming his co-pilot, steering what was often called the DOGE blitzkrieg. Last week — yes, it was just last week — it was tempting to see the biggest story as the end of that partnership, with Musk’s initiative yielding trivial budget savings and significant legal challenges and then ultimately a messily personal (if perhaps temporary) political divorce.
That it was all such good theater meant that it was possible to miss — below claims about “the Epstein files” and innuendo about drug-fueled psychosis and arguments over who was most responsible for the 2024 victory — some actual, substantive beef. That is, Trump’s big policy bill — the only major piece of legislation the Republican Congress has even tried to advance, in its first six months, probably its best chance at a major policy achievement before next year’s midterms and a road map for the near American future that deserves considerably more public scrutiny than it’s gotten to this point.
At a topline glance, the bill is an outrage: large tax cuts for the rich and millions kicked off health insurance, almost a parody of what an apparently fragile coalition of contemporary conservatives might abide (if also a bill that raised the eyebrows of a few debt scolds, including Musk). But because it is also a one-stop legislative omnibus, rushed so quickly through the House that Republican representatives are now protesting they didn’t even know what was in it, there is also an awful lot buried beneath those top-lines worth scrutinizing. Today, I want to highlight three particular priorities, each distinct in its destructive cruelty but together pointing toward something a bit more systematic — a hostility toward collective investment in the common good and our shared future.
The “green dream” was fun while it lasted
The first is on clean energy, where the bill looks like not just a repeal of the landmark Inflation Reduction Act but an indictment of the theory of politics that gave rise to it. As Tim Sahay of the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab recently put it, the political project of that climate act was built on two principles. First, “deliverism” — that in the Obama years policy wonks had erred in not highlighting the value of legislation to voters, and that making a green-industrial boom very visible would also make it very popular. Second, and related, was the principle of political “lock-in,” that showering green money on purple and even red districts would mean that Republicans would, by and large, abandon their opposition and embrace clean-energy pork.
Perhaps faster rollout, and more immediate permitting reform, might have helped vindicate those principles and protect hundreds of billions in clean-energy tax credits. But the apparent demise of the I.R.A. looks like a case study in post-material politics, the thermostatic law of public opinion and the principle that whenever the G.O.P. has to choose between anything at all and tax cuts — in this case, tax credits for the green transition and tax cuts that could be partly paid for through their repeal — it’s never really a choice at all. Republican support for more solar power has fallen to 61 percent today from 84 percent in 2020, according to Pew. Back then, nearly two-thirds of Republicans wanted to prioritize renewable buildout. Today, it’s fallen to one-third.
A new immigration police state
The second is on immigration, where the policy bill promises to allocate $155 billion in funding for border control — five times the amount allocated to the border overall in 2025, even though cross-border flows have recently fallen by more than 90 percent since surging in 2023. Since Inauguration Day, Trump’s border policy has been horrifying and brutal, and over the weekend in Los Angeles, the raids looked like provocations designed to produce a pretext for further crackdowns — by the National Guard and potentially U.S. Marines. But although the images are appalling, the numbers have not been especially large — particularly compared to promises from Trump on the campaign trail to deport tens of millions if elected. Boosting border security spending by more than a hundred billion as illegal border crossings collapse is one big logistical step toward actually pursuing that goal at scale, rather than just performing I.C.E. cruelty as a kind of political consolation prize.
Force-feeding school choice
And a third plank of the bill is, if not the most eye-catching, nevertheless telling — the commitment to establishing school voucher programs across all 50 states.
You may think that school vouchers reflect the basic ideological drift of the country, but for more than half a century, every single time they are put to a democratic test, the public roundly rejects them. In 2024, such initiatives were defeated in three states — Colorado, Kentucky and Nebraska — two of which also went for Trump by huge margins. This pattern is not a new one. Since 1967 — 1967! — no single state referendum in favor of school vouchers has passed anywhere in the country. And yet, in the past few decades, 33 states and the District of Columbia have all enacted voucher programs, and just in the five years since 2019 the number of American students using vouchers has doubled.
This is not just a bad procedural look but a genuine democratic stain, made all the worse because the record of voucher programs is so abysmally bad, as Michigan State’s Josh Cowen documented last year in his cleareyed book “The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers.”
How bad? In Louisiana and Ohio, voucher programs were shown to have been worse for student performance, measured by testing, than the Covid-19 pandemic, which shuttered American schools for many months and produced such widespread outrage that those closings now represent for many Americans the largest social scar produced by the pandemic. Taking advantage of a voucher program in Louisiana, the research suggests, was much worse for your child than that. In Ohio, the effect on test scores was almost twice as bad.
This is not the kind of record that anyone should want to expand, and older programs have produced only somewhat less terrible results. So what explains the zombie persistence of the voucher movement? Almost surely, these programs could be designed better, but it is close to impossible to take in the recent track record and continue to believe that voucher initiatives are good-faith efforts by well-meaning reformers. Much more intuitive is to see them as an ideological effort to divert students out of the public school systems as part of an effort to undermine those systems and what they represent — almost no matter the educational consequences. Especially in the age of MAGA 2.0, DOGE and the big policy bill, vouchers look less like an earnest effort at school reform than like one part of a broader crusade, which continues after Musk — the war on the entire idea of public goods.
Troops and marines deeply troubled by LA deployment: ‘Morale is not great’
Several service members told advocacy groups they felt like pawns in a political game and assignment was unnecessary
California national guards troops and marines deployed to Los Angeles to help restore order after days of protest against the Trump administration have told friends and family members they are deeply unhappy about the assignment and worry their only meaningful role will be as pawns in a political battle they do not want to join.
Three different advocacy organisations representing military families said they had heard from dozens of affected service members who expressed discomfort about being drawn into a domestic policing operation outside their normal field of operations. The groups said they have heard no countervailing opinions.
“The sentiment across the board right now is that deploying military force against our own communities isn’t the kind of national security we signed up for,” said Sarah Streyder of the Secure Families Initiative, which represents the interests of military spouses, children and veterans.
“Families are scared not just for their loved ones’ safety, although that’s a big concern, but also for what their service is being used to justify.”
Chris Purdy of the Chamberlain Network, whose stated mission is to “mobilize and empower veterans to protect democracy”, said he had heard similar things from half a dozen national guard members. “Morale is not great, is the quote I keep hearing,” he said.
The marines and the California national guard did not respond to invitations to comment.
Trump has taken the unusual step of ordering 4,000 national guard members to Los Angeles without the consent of California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, saying that the city risked being “obliterated” by violent protesters without them. Earlier this week, he also activated 700 marines from the Twentynine Palms base two hours’ drive to the east, describing Los Angeles as a “trash heap” that was in danger of burning to the ground.
In reality, the anti-Trump protests – called first in response to aggressive federal roundups of undocumented immigrants, then in anger at the national guard deployment – have been largely peaceful and restricted to just a few blocks around downtown federal buildings. The Los Angeles police has made hundreds of arrests in response to acts of violence and vandalism around the protests, and the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, has instituted a night-time curfew – all with minimal input from the federal authorities.
At the largest demonstration since Trump first intervened, last Sunday, the national guard was hemmed into a staging area by Los Angeles police cruisers and played almost no role in crowd control. Since then, its service members have been deployed to guard buildings and federal law enforcement convoys conducting immigration sweeps. The marines, who arrived on Wednesday, are expected to play a similar function, with no powers of arrest.
Newsom has described the deployment as “a provocation, not just an escalation” and accused the White House of mistreating the service members it was activating. A widely circulated photograph, later confirmed as authentic by the Pentagon, showed national guard members sleeping on a concrete loading dock floor without bedding, and the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the troops arrived with no lodging, insufficient portable toilets and no funds for food or water.
A pair of YouGov polls published on Tuesday show public disapproval of both the national guard and marines deployments, as well as disapproval of Trump’s immigrant deportation policies. A Washington Post poll published on Wednesday came up with similar findings, but with slightly narrower margins.
Active service members are prohibited by law from speaking publicly about their work. But Streyder, of the Secure Families Initiative, said she had heard dozens of complaints indirectly through their families. She had also seen a written comment passed along to her organization from a national guard member who described the assignment as “shitty” – particularly compared with early secondments to help with wildfire relief or, during the Covid pandemic, vaccination outreach.
“Both of those experiences were uncomplicatedly positive, a contribution back to the community,” Streyder described the message as saying. “This is quite the opposite.”
According to Janessa Goldbeck, a Marine Corps veteran who runs the Vet Voice Foundation, the feeling was similar among some of the troops being sent from Twentynine Palms.
“Among all that I spoke with, the feeling was that the marines are being used as political pawns, and it strains the perception that marines are apolitical,” Goldbeck said. “Some were concerned that the Marines were being set up for failure. The overall perception was that the situation was nowhere at the level where marines were necessary.”
The advocates said it was important to draw a distinction between the personal political preferences of service members, many if not most of whom voted for Trump last November, and the higher principle that military personnel should not get involved in politics or politically motivated missions that blur lines of responsibility with civilian agencies.
“We tend to be uniquely apolitical, as an institution and with each other,” Streyder said. “The military is a tool that should be used as a last resort, not a first response… It does not feel that the tool is being calibrated accurately to the situation.”
The discontent may not be limited to California. In Texas, where the governor, Greg Abbott, called out the national guard on Wednesday in San Antonio, Austin and other cities expecting anti-Trump protests, guardsmen have a history of feeling poorly treated in the workplace if not outright misused, Purdy of the Chamberlain Network said.
After Abbott requisitioned the guard in 2021 to help police the Mexican border – a controversial policy codenamed Operation Lone Star – there were bitter complaints among guard members about the length and nature of an assignment that largely duplicated the work of the federal Border Patrol. Several guardsmen took their own lives.
The LA operations are also sparking safety concerns because of complications inherent in pairing military and domestic police officers, advocates say, since they are trained very differently and use different vocabulary to handle emergency situations. In one infamous episode during the 1992 Los Angeles riots – the last time the military were called out to restore order in southern California – a police officer on patrol turned to his marines counterparts and said “cover me”, meaning be ready with your weapon to make sure I stay safe.
To the marines, though, “cover me” meant open fire immediately, which they did, unloading more than 200 M16 rounds into a house where the police had a tip about a possible domestic abuser. By sheer luck, nobody was hurt.
CJ Chivers, a New York Times reporter who was with the marines in Los Angeles in 1992 and witnessed the tail-end of this near-calamity, wrote years later of his mixed feelings about the assignment: “The Marines’ presence in greater Los Angeles… felt unnecessary,” he said. “I’d like to say we understood the context of the role we were given … But domestic crowd control had never been our specialty.”
Streyder and the other advocates concurred. “Domestic law enforcement and the military are entirely separate functions, manned by separate people who have been given separate training, who come from different cultures,” Streyder said. “As military families, we rely implicitly on that separation being honored and remaining clear.”
This saddens me in a thousand different ways.
At a press conference for Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in Los Angeles today, Noem’s security assaulted Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), dragged him into the hallway, forced him to the floor, and handcuffed him as he tried to ask the secretary a question.
Senator Padilla is the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, citizenship, and border safety. That subcommittee has “oversight of federal agencies with citizenship, asylum, refugee, and immigration enforcement responsibilities.”
After the attack, Senator Padilla explained: “I'm here in Los Angeles today, and I was here in the federal building in the conference room, awaiting a scheduled briefing from federal officials as part of my responsibility as a senator to provide oversight and accountability. While I was waiting for the briefing…, I learned that Secretary Noem was having a press conference a couple of doors down the hall. Since the beginning of the year, but especially…over the course of recent weeks, I—several of my colleagues—have been asking the Department of Homeland Security for more information and more answers on their increasingly extreme immigration enforcement actions. And we've gotten little to no information in response to our inquiries.
“And so I came to the press conference to hear what she had to say, to see if I could learn any new additional information…. At one point, I had a question. And so I began to ask a question. I was almost immediately forcibly removed from the room. I was forced to the ground, and I was handcuffed. I was not arrested. I was not detained.
“I will say this. If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they're doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country. We will hold this administration accountable.”
Secretary Noem implied that neither she nor her security knew who the senator was, but even if she had forgotten speaking with him in Senate hearings, a video of the encounter records him saying clearly: “I’m Senator Alex Padilla. I have a question for the secretary.” Senator or not, he did not behave in a way that suggested a threat to the secretary. The Department of Homeland Security said Padilla “chose disrespectful political theater and interrupted a live news conference” and claimed that he “lunged” toward the secretary.
Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) answered: “This is a lie. We all saw the video. The Senator clearly identified himself, and he did not ‘lunge’ toward anyone.” She added: “If these miserable propagandists will lie to you about roughing up a U.S. Senator in a room full of reporters, what won't they lie to you about?”
The assault on Padilla comes days after the Department of Justice under Trump indicted Representative LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) on federal charges saying she impeded immigration officers outside a New Jersey detention center.
While Democratic senators and representatives are outraged, they are having little success getting their Republican colleagues to join them. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) suggested that Padilla had charged Noem—the videos show no such thing—and suggested the Senate should censure Padilla for “wildly inappropriate” behavior.
While much focus has been on the assault itself, what Noem was saying before Padilla spoke out is crucially important. "We are not going away,” she said. “We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city."
In other words, the Trump administration is vowing to get rid of the democratically elected government of California by using military force. That threat is the definition of a coup. It suggests MAGA considers any political victory but their own to be illegitimate and considers themselves justified in removing those governmental officials with violence: a continuation of the attempt of January 6, 2021, to overturn the results of a presidential election.
Priscilla Alvarez and Natasha Bertrand of CNN reported today that, although the Trump administration said its federalization of the National Guard and mobilization of Marines into Los Angeles was an emergency response to rioting, in fact White House officials began talking about using the National Guard and the military as support for immigration enforcement as early as February. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and officials from the Department of Homeland Security led the talks. They also want to use military facilities to hold detainees.
Andrew Gumbel of The Guardian reported today that the National Guard troops and Marines deployed to Los Angeles do not want to be caught in a political battle and are deeply unhappy about their position. Marine Corps veteran Janessa Goldbeck, who runs the Vet Voice Foundation, told Gumbel: “The overall perception was that the situation was nowhere at the level where marines were necessary.”
Yesterday, Trump’s hand-picked chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Lieutenant General Dan Caine, told the Senate that the United States is not, in fact, “being invaded by a foreign nation,” the argument Trump used to send Venezuelans to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador. Caine said: “[A]t this point in time I don’t see any foreign state-sponsored folks invading.” Asked by Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) if there was “a rebellion somewhere in the United States,” he answered simply, “I think there’s definitely some frustrated folks out there.”
Alvarez and Bertrand note that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday confirmed what California governor Gavin Newsom has been calling out: that Trump’s Saturday order activating the National Guard was not specific to California. It could apply to other states. “Part of it was about getting ahead of the problem, so that if in other places, if there are other riots, in places where law enforcement officers are threatened, we would have the capability to surge National Guard there, if necessary,” Hegseth said on Wednesday.
Earlier this week, Texas announced plans to deploy 5,000 troops, and Dionne Searcey of the New York Times reported today that Missouri’s Republican governor, Mike Kehoe, activated the Missouri National Guard as well. “While other states may wait for chaos to ensue, the State of Missouri is taking a proactive approach in the event that assistance is needed to support local law enforcement in protecting our citizens and communities,” Kehoe said in a press release.
It certainly appears as though militarization is no longer about deportations. This morning, Trump posted on social media: “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace. In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”
This afternoon he told reporters: “Our farmers are being hurt badly by, you know, they have very good workers, they've worked for them for 20 years, they're not citizens, but they've turned out to be, you know, great. And we're going to have to do something about that. We can't take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don't have maybe what they're supposed to have, maybe not. And you know what's going to happen and what is happening? They get rid of some of the people, because, you know, you go into a farm and you look and people don't, they've been there for 20, 25 years and they've worked great, and the owner of the farm loves them and everything else. And then you're supposed to throw them out, and you know what happens? They end up hiring the people, the criminals that have come in. The murderers from prisons and everything else. So we're gonna have an order on that pretty soon, I think. We can't do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels. We're gonna have to use a lot of common sense on that.”
So if it is no longer administration policy to engage in the sweeps that are causing such chaos and sparking protests, why are Republican authorities mobilizing troops?
After today’s events, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a constitutional scholar, stood in front of the Capitol and reminded Americans: “We have no kings here, we have no queens here, we have no emperors, we have no dictators, we have no despots, and we have no serfs and no slaves and no subjects, and none of us is a subject to Donald Trump. None of us is a subject to Mike Johnson. We are all citizens, those of us who aspire and attain to public office are nothing but the servants of the people. And the minute that somebody in public office thinks that they're a king, they're a queen, they're an emperor, they're a dictator, that is time for the people to evict, eject, reject, impeach, try, convict, and start all over again, because the most important words of our Constitution are the three first words of the Constitution: ‘We the people.’”
Tonight, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer ruled that Trump broke the law when he federalized the California National Guard and that he must return those troops to the control of California governor Gavin Newsom. Breyer granted California’s request for a restraining order but delayed enforcement of his order until Friday at noon. Just before midnight Eastern Time, a panel of the 9th Circuit granted a stay that permits Trump to retain control until a June 17 hearing.
Tonight, Israel launched what it called “a pre-emptive strike on Iran, and declared a state of emergency in Israel” in anticipation of a retaliatory strike. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also currently Trump’s national security advisor, issued a statement for the White House saying that the U.S. was not involved in the strikes and that “our top priority is protecting American forces in the region.” He urged Iran not to “target U.S. interests or personnel.”
This thread is getting as depressing as the global warming and the end of the world threads. Heather Cox Richardson manages to offset the despair to some degree. I don't know how she manages to crank these little reports night after night.
We are Nobel laureates, scientists, writers and artists. The threat of fascism is back
Open letter
As in 1925, when Mussolini was in power, we must openly defy the brutal imposition of the fascist ideology
On 1 May 1925, with Benito Mussolini already in power, a group of Italian intellectuals publicly denounced his fascist regime in an open letter. The signatories – scientists, philosophers, writers and artists – took a stand in support of the essential tenets of a free society: the rule of law, personal liberty and independent thinking, culture, art and science. Their open defiance against the brutal imposition of the fascist ideology – at great personal risk – proved that opposition was not only possible, but necessary. Today, 100 years later, the threat of fascism is back – and so we must summon that courage and defy it again.
Fascism emerged in Italy a century ago, marking the advent of modern dictatorship. Within a few years, it spread across Europe and the world, taking different names but maintaining similar forms. Wherever it seized power, it undermined the separation of powers in the service of autocracy, silenced opposition through violence, took control of the press, halted the advancement of women’s rights and crushed workers’ struggles for economic justice. Inevitably, it permeated and distorted all institutions devoted to scientific, academic and cultural activities. Its cult of death exalted imperial aggression and genocidal racism, triggering the second world war, the Holocaust, the death of tens of millions of people and crimes against humanity.
Oh great. A new war. Right on schedule.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, on June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress resolved “That six companies of expert riflemen, be immediately raised in Pennsylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia; that each company consist of a captain, three lieutenants, four serjeants, four corporals, a drummer or trumpeter, and sixty-eight privates…[and that] each company, as soon as completed, shall march and join the army near Boston, to be there employed as light infantry, under the command of the chief Officer in that army.”
And thus Congress established the Continental Army.
The First Continental Congress, which met in 1774, refused to establish a standing army, afraid that a bad government could use an army against its people. The Congress met in response to the British Parliament’s closing of the port of Boston and imposition of martial law there, but its members hoped they could repair their relationship with King George III and simply sent entreaties to the king to end what were known as the “Intolerable Acts.”
In 1775 the Battles of Lexington and Concord changed the equation. On April 19, British soldiers opened fire on colonists just as Patriot leaders feared they might. In the aftermath of that deadly day, about 15,000 untrained Massachusetts militiamen converged on Boston and laid siege to the town, where they bottled up about 6,500 British Regulars.
The Battles of Lexington and Concord made it clear the British government endangered American liberties. The Second Continental Congress met in what is now called Independence Hall in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, to address the crisis in Boston. The delegates overcame their suspicions of a standing army to conclude they must bring the various state militias into a continental organization to stand against King George III.
With the establishment of the Continental Army, a British officer, General Charles Lee, resigned his commission in the British Army and published a public letter explaining that the king’s overreach had turned him away from service in His Majesty’s army and toward the Patriots:
“[W]henever it shall please his Majesty to call me forth to any honourable service against the natural hereditary enemies of our country, or in defence of his just rights and dignity, no man will obey the righteous summons with more zeal and alacrity than myself,” he wrote, “but the present measures seem to me so absolutely subversive of the rights and liberties of every individual subject, so destructive to the whole empire at large, and ultimately so ruinous to his Majesty's own person, dignity and family, that I think myself obliged in conscience as a Citizen, Englishman, and Soldier of a free state, to exert my utmost to defeat them.”
After they established a Continental Army, the next thing Congress members did was to name a French and Indian War veteran, Virginia planter George Washington, commander-in-chief. To Washington fell the challenge of establishing an army to defend the nation without creating a military a tyrant could use to repress the people.
It was not an easy project. The Continental Army was made up of volunteers who were loyal primarily to the officers they had chosen, and because Congress still feared a standing army, their enlistments initially were short. Different units trained with different field manuals, making it hard to turn them into a unified fighting force. Women came to the camps with their men, often bringing their children. The women worked for the half-rations the government provided, washing, cooking, hauling water, and tending the wounded.
After an initial bout of enthusiasm at the start of the war, men stopped enlisting, and in 1777 Congress increased the times of enlistment to three years or “for the duration” of the conflict. That meant that the men in the army were more often poor than wealthy, enlisting for the bounties offered, and Congress found it easy to overlook those 12,000 people encamped about 18 miles to the northwest of Philadelphia in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, for six months in the hard winter of 1777–1778. The Congress had no way to compel the states to provide money, food, or supplies for the army, and the army almost fell apart for lack of support.
Supply chains broke as the British captured food or it spoiled in transit to the soldiers, and wartime inflation meant Congress did not appropriate enough money for food. Hunger and disease stalked the camp, but even worse was the lack of clothing. More than 1,000 soldiers died, and about eight or ten deserted every day. Washington warned the president of the Continental Congress that the men were close to mutiny, even as a group of army officers were working with congressmen to replace Washington, complaining about how he was prosecuting the war.
By February 1778 a delegation from the Continental Congress had visited Valley Forge and, understanding that the lack of supplies made the army, and thus the country, truly vulnerable, set out to reform the supply department. Then a newly arrived Prussian officer, Baron Friedrich von Steuben, drilled the soldiers into unity and better morale. And then, in May, the soldiers learned that France had signed a treaty with the American states in February, lending money, matériel, and men to the cause of American independence. The army survived.
By the end of 1778, the main theater of the war had shifted to the South, where British officers hoped to recruit Loyalists to their side. Instead, guerrilla bands helped General Nathanael Greene bait the British into a war of endurance that finally ended on October 19, 1781, at the Battle of Yorktown in Virginia, where British general Charles Cornwallis surrendered to General Washington and French commander Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau.
The Continental Army had defeated the army of the king and established a nation based on the principle that all men were created equal and had a right to have a say in the government under which they lived.
In September 1783, negotiators concluded the Treaty of Paris that formally ended the war, and Congress discharged most of the troops still in service. In his November 2 farewell address to his men, Washington noted that their victory against such a formidable power was “little short of a standing Miracle.” “[W]ho has before seen a disciplined Army formed at once from such raw materials?” Washington wrote. “Who that was not a witness could imagine, that the most violent local prejudices would cease so soon, and that Men who came from the different parts of the Continent, strongly disposed by the habits of education, to despise and quarrel with each other, would instantly become but one patriotic band of Brothers?”
With the army disbanded, General Washington himself stepped away from military leadership. On December 23, Washington addressed Congress, saying: “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action, and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life.”
In 1817, given the choice of subjects to paint for the Rotunda in the U.S. Capitol, being rebuilt after the British had burned it during the War of 1812, fine artist John Trumbull picked the moment of Washington’s resignation from the army. As he discussed the project with President James Madison, Trumbull told the president: “I have thought that one of the highest moral lessons ever given to the world, was that presented by the conduct of the commander-in-chief, in resigning his power and commission as he did, when the army, perhaps, would have been unanimously with him, and few of the people disposed to resist his retaining the power which he had used with such happy success, and such irreproachable moderation.”
Madison agreed, and the painting of a man voluntarily walking away from the leadership of a powerful army rather than becoming a dictator hangs today in the Capitol Rotunda.
It is the story of this Army, 250 years old tomorrow, that President Donald J. Trump says he is honoring with a military parade in Washington, D.C., although it also happens to be his 79th birthday.
But the celebration of ordinary people who fought against tyranny will be happening not just in the nation’s capital but all across the country, as Americans participating in at least 2,000 planned No Kings protests recall the principles American patriots championed 250 years ago.
