Comment on On this date in 1862

Brian Stelter: “Presidents don’t ordinarily pick the director of Voice of America, an international news broadcaster funded by the US government. But President-elect Donald Trump says he wants his ally Kari Lake to take over VOA.” Voice of America says it has a “firewall” in place that “prohibits interference by any US government official in the objective, independent reporting of news.”

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) claimed she was “physically accosted” earlier this week, but witnesses have disputed Mace’s allegation, the Charleston Post & Courier reports. They claim the only contact they saw between Mace and the person ultimately arrested by Capitol police was a handshake after a reception. Authorities have not released full details about the incident, including whether security cameras captured the exchange on tape.

Simon Kuper: “Modern historians tend to be wary of ascribing change to individuals. They are more likely to identify ‘the fish that changed the world’ (to quote the subtitle of Mark Kurlansky’s book Cod) than a human who did. Most historians prefer impersonal structural forces: geography for the French Annales school, economics for Marxists, technology for others, while there’s been a recent surge of interest in climate change and pandemics.” “But having said all that, here comes Donald Trump.

Jonathan Bernstein: “United States Senators are really, really, old. There’s nothing wrong with some aging Senators; there’s something very out of whack when the more than half of them have reached 65.”

Jonathan Chait: “Now Trump, preparing for his second term as president, has decided to replace the FBI director again. The figure he picked to replace Comey—the lifelong Republican Christopher Wray—proved unable to meet Trump’s expectations for the position, which are (1) to permit Trump and his allies to violate the law with impunity, and (2) to investigate anybody who interferes with (1).

“I have thought for a long time that there’s a race between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. And the question is: Does the Republican Party become more economically populist in a genuine way before the Democratic Party opens itself up to people who don’t agree with us on 100 percent of our social and cultural issues?” — Sen.