Grace Mallon

Emerging from a writing session at quarter to six and it's still light!

Fabulous!

Page of Reason | February 2026 Dispatches from your most humble servant

I’m thrilled to be joining the @theitps.bsky.social as a visiting Scholar in Residence for the next 2 years. I’m looking forward to working with ye ITPS to advance its public history initiatives while remaining @inpursuitusa.bsky.social of the American experiment.

open.substack.com/pub/itps/p/p...

"The people have spoken, the bastards" - Dick Tuck, defeated California Senate candidate, 1966.

The Green victory in Denton is the result which will have the biggest effect on Labour, far more so than a Reform win.

The blithe assumption progressives have nowhere else to go has been proved catastrophically wrong.

Can’t help thinking of this quote from a Labour minister, a year ago…

Cover of book with text in yellow reading: The Firearm Revolution: From Renaissance Italy to the European Empires, overlaid on an image of an angel in seventeenth-century dress with wings and a long gun.

Hello Bluesky! My new book, THE FIREARM REVOLUTION, is out on 14 April. It’s about how a new technology changed society, and how hard it was to control. Here’s a little thread of what’s inside:

JD Vance: "We're announcing today that we have decided to temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding that is going to the state of Minnesota in order to ensure that the state of Minnesota takes its obligations seriously to be good stewards of the American people's tax money."

Enslaved Memorial at The Hermitage Honors 325 People Former President Andrew Jackson’s home addresses history of people enslaved at the property, adds further programming

On Saturday, The Hermitage addressed the history of 325 people who were enslaved at the home of President Andrew Jackson.

Inside Ukraine’s ‘kill zone’ Drones are reshaping the frontline with Russia — and the future of warfare

Inside Ukraine’s ‘kill zone’ ft.trib.al/cLIPwzx

Library Company names its new chief, the first-ever woman to lead the group in 295 years

Jessica Chopin Roney will take over after the Library Company of Philadelphia merges with Temple University. She has existing ties to both institutions.

Paul Blume @PaulBlume_FOX9 · 1h BREAKING NEWS: U.S. District Court Judge Laura Provinzino has just found a government atty in CIVIL CONTEMPT of COURT for violations of her orders in a habeas case. Attorney cited is Matthew Isihara, a JAG atty from Dept. of War assisting in local US Attorney office @FOX9 (1/) Paul Blume @PaulBlume_FOX9 · 1h Judge Provinzino had ordered a detained immigrant held by ICE in El Paso, TX be released in Minnesota with all of his identification papers. ICE released the man in TX with none of his papers, forcing his attorney to find him a shelter for the night & flight back to MN (2/)

Paul Blume @PaulBlume_FOX9 · 57m Judge said she is imposing CIVIL CONTEMPT "to force the government to comply with her court order" to immediately return immigrant's papers. Gov't attorney Matthew Isihara is responsible for $500 daily fine, every day the man does not have his papers starting tomorrow. (3/3) Paul Blume @PaulBlume_FOX9 · 47m CONTEMPT FINDING: Matthew Isihara apologized for allowing the order in this habeas case to "fall through the cracks." Blamed situation on case overload & significant understaffing in US Attorney's office. Says he has picked up nearly 130 habeas cases in just last month. @FOX9

1. DHS surges 3,000 officers to Minneapolis without doing anywhere near enough prep first.
2. Hundreds of habeas cases overwhelm local courts.
3. Dozens of DOJ lawyers quit in disgust/anger.
4. The DOJ brings in JAGs to cover.
5. A JAG was just held in contempt and fined $500/day for ICE's failures.

Episode Three: All the Masters Necessary — Revolutionary Histories You might not realize it, but there was almost a world in which there was no Jane Austen. Or at the very least, no Jane Austen novels. No Pride and Prejudice. No Sense and Sensibility. In today’s epis...

New Episode Alert! There was almost a world in which there was no Jane Austen. Or at the very least, no Jane Austen novels. No Pride and Prejudice. No Sense and Sensibility. In today’s episode, we explore Jane’s brush with death and the unusual cast of women who shaped her literary interests.

September 1550: some outraged Lisbon residents denounced some visiting Englishmen for roasting a duck on a fasting day. In the margin of the denunciation, the inquisitor wrote "concerning the Englishmen's duck" (do pato dos ingresses).

It finally happened! A memeable Starmer photo

Congress's Constitution A leading scholar of Congress and the Constitution analyzes Congress’s surprisingly potent set of tools in the system of checks and balances. Congress is w...

Hi new followers!

If you happen to be interested in the separation of powers, Congress, government shutdowns, contempt of Congress, the filibuster, and more, have I got the book for you! yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

Front cover of Violent Waters: Environmental Politics in Early Modern England by Elly Robson Dezateux.

Blurb of Violent Waters: How were environments and politics remade by sovereigns, floods, mapmakers, migrants, rioters, and writers during wetland improvement projects in early modern England? Violent Waters examines flagship ventures which promised to transform unruly fenland fringes into orderly terrain at the heart of national power and productivity. In practice, these projects sparked constitutional controversy, new floods, and huge riots. The first state-led project in Hatfield Level brought local, national, and transnational interests into contact and conflict for almost a century. Elly Robson Dezateux traces the environmental politics that emerged as water and land were constructed and contested, both mentally and materially. These disputes pivoted on urgent questions about risk and justice, which became entangled in civil war conflict and exposed the limits of central authority and technology. Ultimately, improvement was destabilised by a lack of legitimacy and the dynamism of local custom as a method of environmental management and collective action. Wetland communities, as much as improvers and sovereigns, remade the terrain of politics and the future of the fens.

Violent Waters: Environmental Politics in Early Modern England is out now with Cambridge University Press: www.cambridge.org/core/books/v...

This watery, riotous book has been more than a decade in the making, and I'm delighted to see it out in the world to live its own life!

I wrote about enslaved people in Hamburg, flight attempts, and the city's free-soil law of 1837. It's an open-access publication: 🗃️

The Tame and the Wild — Harvard University Press A dramatic new interpretation of the encounter between Europe and the Americas that reveals the crucial role of animals in the shaping of the modern world.When the men and women of the island of Guana...

Learned about the depressing trend of describing books as TL;DR (Too Long, Didn't Read) at a conference last weekend.

Instead, I propose LR;WI (Long Read and Worth It). What are some long books that you read recently and enjoyed? I'll start: 🗃️

www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...

Thank you!!

One of the pleasures of the last two weeks has been the (belated) discovery of @carltonfwlarson.bsky.social's fantastic 'Trials of Allegiance,' which will now be a staple of my American Revolution reading list: global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Fantastic!!

A long-time goal finally realized

2026 Annual Meeting Call for Papers | American Society for Legal History Call for Papers 2026 American Society for Legal History Annual Meeting (November 12 - 14, 2026) The Program Committee of the American Society for Legal History invites proposals for the 2026 meeting t...

I'm honored to serve as one of the cochairs of the Program Committee for the 2026 American Society for Legal History Conference in Banff, Canada! The CFP is now available. Please consider submitting a proposal! aslh.net/2026-annual-... #ASLH #legalhistory

Markwayne Mullin: "I agree with what Lindsey is saying on defunding these sanctuary cities. We should pull our TSA agents out of their airports and not allow their airpot to be classified as international or even a regional hub. We should pull all of our aid."

JUST IN: Democrats flip a red seat in the Texas Senate.

Taylor Rehmet wins against Leigh Wambsganss, a conservative activist who helped lead right-wing efforts to take over TX school boards.

With all early vote, and 95% of precincts, in, Dem up 57/43.

Trump won this seat by 17% in Tarrant County.

I wrote about this in depth for @uwlawdemocracy.bsky.social but I'm summarizing the tl;dr version in this thread. Of course for more citations etc etc, check out the longer piece. 2/ statedemocracy.law.wisc.edu/featured/202...

California recently banned federal law enforcement officials (including ICE) from wearing masks or concealing their identities. At least 17 other states have proposed similar laws.

The federal government claims that these laws are unconstitutional. Is that right? Well, it's complicated 🧵 1/

After 1776: Settlers, Revolution, and Citizenship in the Atlantic Republics - CALL FOR PAPERS - RHS After 1776: Settlers, Revolution, and Citizenship in the Atlantic Republics University College London, 2–3 July 2026 Call for Papers deadline - 28 February 2026 We invite proposals for a two-day works...

royalhistsoc.org/calendar/aft...

Reviewing for the English Historical Review

A headline reads: "How the National Park Service Is Deleting American History." An individual in a brown puffer coat stands with their back to the camera, taping notes onto a board on a brick wall. Each note says "learn all history." Photo by Rachel Wisniewski for The New York Times.

National Park Service workers across the U.S. are removing materials about slavery, climate change and labor history to comply with an order from President Trump. In some of the first legal pushback, the city of Philadelphia sued the Trump administration on Thursday. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/23/c...