By Sarah Becker

Copyright (c)2026 Sarah Becker

Happy New Year!  America’s 250th anniversary [1776-2026] starts soon, and still incumbent President Donald J. Trump [R-47] does not get it. According to Pew Research voters are weary! In August 2025 Trump’s current job approval rating stood “at 38%, with 60% of U.S. adults expressing disapproval of his performance.”

In April, 2025, the White House claimed “a nonstop deluge of hoaxes and lies from Democrats and their allies.” [https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/04/100-days-of-hoaxes-cutting-through-the-fake-news] Yet it is the Trumpster who falsely claims “Climate Change is a hoax.” The affordability crisis, too.

Now Trump argues in favor of the U.S. withdrawal from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Established in 1949, the NATO alliance was ‘the first peacetime military alliance the U.S. entered outside the Western Hemisphere.” President Truman’s goal then: “to deter Soviet aggression and ensure collective security.”

In December, 2025, NATO’s Deputy Secretary General Radmila Shekerinska travelled to the United States to speak personally with politicians, journalists and the public. President Trump, a Nobel aspirant, has yet to craft a peace deal satisfactory not only to Ukraine and Russia, but also NATO’s more outspoken European members.

“So, this is what we do,” Shekerinska said. “Europe and America in NATO together! Two continents, 32 nations and 1 billion people. Standing together is how we stay safe in a world that has become very dangerous, very volatile and sometimes very unpredictable.”

Gerrymandering, a partisan redistricting plan is a popular election strategy. Every 10 years, America’s 50 states “redraw their congressional and state legislative maps to account for changes in population,” the Gerrymandering Project explained. “In many states [Texas and California especially], the politicians who control this process draw district lines in a way that maximizes their party’s partisan advantage.” His popularity waning, Trump is desperate to keep the process alive.

In 1812 Massachusetts Governor Eldridge Gerry signed a bill that re-drew state senate districts in favor of his then Democratic-Republican party. The “oddly shaped districts” were “so contorted” that people said the map “looked like a mythical salamander.”

In December, 2025, twenty Indiana Republican State Senators declined to vote in favor of the Indiana Legislature’s Republican-drawn redistricting plan. It seems Trump’s political allies tried to turn Republican State Senators’ No votes into a loyalty test.

Convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein [1953-2019], U.S. House documents confirm, describes his “closest friend for 10 years” Donald Trump “as a serial cheat in his marriages [and] at heart a friendless man incapable of kindness.” The term sex trafficking, as used in America’s pre- and post-revolutionary periods, refers to the African-American slave trade.

Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson did romance his slave Sally Hemings. And Federalist Party member Alexander Hamilton cuddled Maria Reynolds, the 23 year-old wife of swindler James Reynolds. The monetary and political cost to Hamilton: a $1,000 payment to Maria’s husband, public acknowledgement of his misdeed, and the Democratic-Republican Party’s skewed interpretation of his July 18, 1797, “Reynolds Pamphlet.” Jefferson used the pamphlet as “political ammunition.”

“The charge against me is a connection with one James Reynolds for purposes of improper pecuniary speculation,” Hamilton wrote. ” My real crime is an amorous connection with his wife, for a considerable time with his privity and connivance, if not originally brought on by a combination between the husband and wife with the design to extort money from me….”

“A spirit of jacobinism, if not entirely a new spirit, has at least been cloathed with a more gigantic body and armed with more powerful weapons [calumny] than it ever before possessed,” Hamilton continued. “It is perhaps not too much to say, that it threatens more extensive and complicated mischiefs to the world than have hitherto flowed from the three great scourges of mankind: War, Pestilence and Famine.”

“To what point it will ultimately lead society, it is impossible for human foresight to pronounce,”  Hamilton concluded, “but there is just ground to apprehend that its progress may be marked with calamities of which the dreadful incidents of the French revolution afford a very faint image. Incessantly busied in undermining all the props of public security and private happiness, it seems to threaten the political and moral world with a complete overthrow.”

That said, did you know that both Jefferson and Hamilton patronized Alexandria’s historic Gadsby’s Tavern? That Gadsby’s Tavern is participating in Virginia’s 250th Passport Program?

“Historic Alexandria is proud to join 70 premier historic destinations across Virginia in the launch of the Virginia 250 Passport, a first-of-its-kind statewide tourism journey celebrating America’s 250th,” the November, 2025, press release explained. “Featured Alexandria museums include Gadsby’s Tavern Museum, the Alexandria History Museum at The Lyceum, and the Alexandria Black History Museum…Learn more at VirginiaHistory.org/250Passport.”

“So many of our founding fathers spent time or stayed at Gadsby’s Tavern,” The National Park Service said. “Some had to travel hundreds of miles from their homes in order to participate in the critical political gatherings and debates around the Articles of Confederation, which would change us from a collection of self-ruling states into a cohesive nation.”

Gadsby’s Tavern was constructed in 1785; expanded in 1792 the same year Alexandria pharmacist Edward Stabler opened his long-standing Apothecary Shop. Mount Vernon’s Washington family was among Stabler’s many influential customers. For more information on Mount Vernon’s participation in Virginia Passport 250 visit https://www.mountvernon.org/250.

“Following the War for Independence, a convention, called by [Mount Vernon’s] George Washington, convened in Gadsby’s Tavern to settle the question of import duties on Potomac River Commerce,” the National Park Service reminded. “The question was of large importance, having broad implications for the political and economic system of the newly independent nation.”

“The meeting at Gadsby’s Tavern was one of a series of meetings that led to the constitutional convention held in Philadelphia in 1787,” The National Park Service concluded. “The first celebration of the adoption of the Federal Constitution subsequently took place at the Tavern on June 28, 1788.”

Begin the New Year, America’s 250th year with a good read. My suggested list includes: David McCullough’s 1776; Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns’ The American Revolution: An Intimate History; Ron Chernow’s Washington: A Life; National Archives’ The Fairfax County Resolves July 18, 1774, John Carlyle’s role included]; Ralph Ketcham’s James Madison: A Biography; Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, the Constitutional Convention’s The Foundation of Freedom; Walter Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, also The Greatest Sentence Ever Written; David Hackett Fischer’s African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals; Cokie Roberts’ Founding Mothers and Ladies of Liberty; Richard P. George and Cornel West’s Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Disunion.

Wishing all a thoughtful election year!

About the Author: Sarah Becker started writing for The Economist while a graduate student in England. Similar publications followed. She joined the Crier in 1996 while serving on the Alexandria Convention and Visitors Association Board. Her interest in antiquities began as a World Bank hire, with Indonesia’s need to generate hard currency. Balinese history, i.e. tourism provided the means. The New York Times describes Becker’s book, Off Your Duffs & Up the Assets, as “a blueprint for thousands of nonprofit managers.” A former museum director, SLAM’s saving grace Sarah received Alexandria’s Salute to Women Award in 2007.  Email abitofhistory53@gmail.com