Conservative icon and activist Charlie Kirk joins a list of civil rights figures and politicians who were killed for speaking what they believe. Thousands have expressed their desire to pick up the baton and carry Kirk's legacy forward. The question is this: Is it possible to fill the void left behind when someone like Charlie Kirk is assassinated?

In this episode, we look at the assassinations of two Civil Rights icons, Medgar Evars and Robert F. Kennedy, and ask the question, "What if?" How would things have been different if they had lived to continue their work?

Host: Alan

Research: Elena, the Roots of Today archivist

Music by: Andrii Poradovskyi (lNPLUSMUSIC - Pixabay)

Show Notes: www.rootsoftoday.blog

In early September 2025, President Donald Trump announced that he would deploy federal troops into several major U.S. cities to quell unrest — even if governors objected.

The announcement immediately set off a wave of debate. Critics pointed to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, a law meant to prevent the use of the Army as a domestic police force. Supporters countered with the Insurrection Act of 1807, a much older law that presidents have invoked many times to justify troop deployments at home.

So here’s the central question for us today: Is Trump doing something unprecedented — or is he following a long, if uneasy, American tradition of presidents sending troops into the streets?

In an NPR report from September 5th, President Trump signed an executive order on Friday to give the Department of Defense a new name: the Department of War. The change returns the department to a name that it carried for much of its history, until it became the Department of Defense in the wake of World War II. During a press conference in the Oval Office, Trump tried to explain that the name change was designed to reflect a new tone for the nation and the military.

For most of America’s early history, we didn’t have a “Department of Defense.” We had a Department of War. After World War II, in the anxious first years of the Cold War, Washington reorganized the military and rebranded the whole enterprise. Today, that name—Defense—is in the news again, with a push from the White House to bring back the Department of War. What did “War” mean then? Why did we switch to “Defense”? And what would it mean to switch back now?

As always, this is Alan, your host, reminding you to grab your coffee, tea, or whatever beverage you prefer as we dig right in to the history of the Department of War, from it’s origins in the Constitution and some of the early challenges it faced, to its rebranding following the Second World War and the rise of the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

Music by: Andrii Poradovskyi (lNPLUSMUSIC - Pixabay)

Show Notes: www.rootsoftoday.blog

At its best, the CDC is a scientific bulwark against disease. At its worst, it becomes an institution caught between science, politics, and profit. The question for us is whether the CDC can navigate these pressures and keep public trust — or whether the forces of politics and perception will continue to erode its authority. RFK Jr. appears to be on a mission to erect a firewall between regulatory responsibilities and the corporate profit motive. Time will tell if his efforts are beneficial, or if they damage the organization.

Music by: Andrii Poradovskyi (lNPLUSMUSIC - Pixabay)

Show Notes: www.rootsoftoday.blog

In 2014, Russia invaded and then annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine. It became clear that Russia faced no real consequences for that violation of Ukrainian sovereignty, so in 2022 Vladamir Putin followed up with a full-scale invasion of the country. Putin claimed the action was necessary to “denazify” Ukraine and to defend the Russian-speaking populations in the border regions. These claims have been widely rejected by the West.

Nevertheless, what we are witnessing is the continuation of events that have a long historical context. In this case, the boat we are riding in is rocking from the wake of the Second World War in Europe. It is imperative that we understand the history here, because the only way the current war raging in Ukraine is going to come to an end is through a negotiated settlement, or an escalation that brings the full might of NATO into the conflict. And since the latter most likely includes a full nuclear exchange between Russia and NATO, a negotiated settlement becomes the only prudent course of action.

There is a popular sentiment that Putin is Hitler and Ukraine should fight until Russia is completely driven out of the land it holds. With that, there are those demanding nothing but a full Russian surrender and a return to borders as they existed before the annexation of Crimea. This ignores some harsh truths. The first is this: Ukrainians cannot defeat Russia alone, regardless of how much military supplies NATO keeps giving them. The second harsh truth is that NATO cannot join the fight without it escalating into World War Three. And finally, and this is the one that the left finds hardest to swallow, Putin does have some legitimate security concerns regarding NATO, concerns born out of nearly a century, or more, of history with the rest of Europe.

Music by: Andrii Poradovskyi (lNPLUSMUSIC - Pixabay)

Show Notes: www.rootsoftoday.blog

On August 12th, 2025, the White House sent a formal letter to Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III, ordering a comprehensive review of exhibits, educational materials, and even social-media posts at eight museums. The goal, according to the letter, was to ensure all content aligns with the President’s March executive order to present “uplifting” and “unifying” history and to remove “divisive or ideologically driven” language.

Historians and museum professionals have been quick to respond. The American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians warned in March that the new directives risk turning public history into “ideological litmus tests” rather than scholarly interpretation. As one museum scholar put it: “History is not a Hallmark card.”

Supporters in the administration frame this as “restoring accuracy” and removing political bias from taxpayer-funded exhibits. Critics counter that accuracy here means agreement with the White House’s preferred narrative — and that once you give political actors final approval over historical content, independence is the first casualty.

This push by the Trump administration reignites a battle cry from the right that demands the nation return to teaching the true history of the United States. But no one is asking some very fundamental questions, the first of which is: what exactly is “true history?” That leads to another fundamental question. Who exactly gets to make that determination? But this argument exposes a much deeper problem, and that is the fundamental lack of understanding about what history is in the first place.

Music by: Andrii Poradovskyi (lNPLUSMUSIC - Pixabay)

Show Notes: www.rootsoftoday.blog

In the United States, political power has always been counted—literally. From the moment the framers dipped their quills into ink and drafted Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, they established a system in which representation would not be apportioned by guesswork or political bargaining alone, but by an “actual enumeration” every ten years.

Behind the clean arithmetic of apportionment lurks an untidy truth: deciding who counts means deciding whose political voice matters. From the original Constitution’s compromise that treated enslaved people as “three-fifths” of a person, to the exclusion of Native Americans “not taxed,” to modern battles over the counting of undocumented immigrants, the census has never been a neutral act of head counting. It has been, and remains, a contest over power, representation, and belonging.

Get ready, because we are going to take a hard look at the history behind the census and the fight over representation. After all, the census determines the "we" in "We the People."

Music by: Andrii Poradovskyi (lNPLUSMUSIC - Pixabay)

Show Notes: www.rootsoftoday.blog

Eighty years ago this week, two American bombers lifted off from an airfield on Tinian Island in the Western Pacific and flew into history. Each plane carried a single bomb—one codenamed "Little Boy" and the other codenamed "Fat Man." These two separate attacks would mark the first and only time nuclear weapons have ever been used in war. Hiroshima. Nagasaki. Names that now evoke memories unspeakable destruction. But those names are also surrounded by questions, many of them still unanswered.

Today, the debate over the use of the atomic bomb is far from settled. What was once a largely accepted account—that the bombs were dropped to end the war swiftly and save lives—has been increasingly challenged by historians, ethicists, and international legal scholars. Critics argue that Japan was already seeking surrender, that the bombings were motivated by diplomatic posturing toward the Soviet Union, or that they constituted a war crime against civilians. Others counter that revisionist arguments ignore the brutal context of the Pacific War and downplay the enormous human cost of a conventional invasion.

In this episode, we’ll look at both sides of the debate and trace the evolution of thought—from the confident justifications of 1945 to the more complex, divided assessments of today in a world where nuclear weapons not only exist, but are much more powerful than the two dropped on Japan.

Music by: Andrii Poradovskyi (lNPLUSMUSIC - Pixabay)

Show Notes: www.rootsoftoday.blog