Today, Steven Hahn, professor of history at NYU, on his new history of 19th century american empire-building, “A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910.” Mexico and the Mississippi River valley as important and overlooked centers of 19c imperial power. How imperialism favored by slaveholders and apologists worked well with limited-government philosophies. American capitalism’s development, alongside the state, following the civil war. The trans-Mississippi West and post-emancipation South as “imperial proving grounds” for American state capitalism. Why socialism was big in states like Texas, Oklahoma, and in the midwest.

On the fun half – Are democrats ready to ride single-payer to victory? Trump dances and curtsies in Saudi Arabia, HR McMaster blows some more of his integrity, Wilbur Ross gives creepy defense of “liberalizing” Saudi regime, Anderson Cooper said Jeffrey Lord would defend Trump pooping on his desk.