Solitaire is the much beloved choice for killing time in the office or at the home computer. The three most popular solitaire card games are Klondike, Spider, and FreeCell, and these enjoy dizzying heights of popularity as a result of being included as part of Microsoft Windows in the 1990s (for more on this, see this article). What these three games have in common is that they all fit the "builder" genre. That means that they follow the basic formula of many solitaire games, where the overall objective is to arrange cards in ascending order from Ace through to King, for each of the four separate suits. Typically this is done by placing and moving cards within a tableau of rows and columns of cards, where the cards are often arranged in descending order, sometimes with an additional requirement of alternating colours.
Klondike, Spider, and FreeCell are by no means unique in this regard, and the genre of "building" games is the most popular archetype within the larger world of solitaire card games. Not all solitaire card games are builder games, but builder games are the most common and arguably the most loved. So which other solitaire games of this type should you know about and should you try first? I've explored the world of solitaire card games extensively myself, and also examined numerous lists about the most popular ones, to help you begin your experience with the best of the best, rather than waste your time with mediocre or obscure games. The six builder games covered in this article are time-tested classics that are most well-known and loved, and represent the best "next step" for anyone wanting to branch out after enjoying Klondike, Spider, or FreeCell.
Each of the builder games discussed here represents a small category of its own, because there are many popular variations and related games for each, which I will cover as well. As with my previous articles on solitaire games games, the accompanying links go to Solitaired.com, which is a website where you can play these games for free. But because these games are so common and well known, you'll find that they are included in most software and websites that offer collections of solitaire card games.

== Games With One Deck ==

BAKER'S DOZEN
Overview: Baker's Dozen also represents a family of games that plays much like Forty Thieves (see below), but with a single deck. While some variations have a stock, in Baker's Dozen and its most closely related games all the cards are face up, so you have complete information to work with.
Game-play: The tableau consists of thirteen columns of four overlapping and face-up cards each, while the four foundations begin empty. To ensure that the tableau doesn't lock up too quickly, Kings are automatically placed to the bottom of each column when they are turned up. Just like in Forty Thieves, only the single top card of each column may be moved, and columns are built downwards, in any colour and suit. Empty spaces in the tableau may not be filled. As you'd expect, the aim is to get the entire deck onto the four foundations, building up each from Ace to King, with each being built upwards by value.
Variations: Portuguese Solitaire makes Baker's Dozen slightly easier by allowing empty spaces in the tableau to be filled with Kings, while Spanish Patience allows building on the foundations regardless of suit. Baker's Two Deck is effectively the same as Baker's Dozen but using two decks, with eight foundations and a tableau consisting of ten columns with 10 or 11 cards each.
My thoughts: Because this only involves a single deck, Baker's Dozen is much quicker to play than Forty Thieves, and the chances of success are also significantly higher, with as many as 2 of 3 games being easily winnable. The fact that Kings begin at the bottom of the tableau ensures that you don't get stuck too quickly, and being able to build down in the tableau independent of suit ensures a great amount of flexibility. At the same time managing the tableau carefully is still important, especially in cases where empty spaces don't get filled. This makes Baker's Dozen a quicker, simpler, and more accessible game than Forty Thieves and its many variants, while still remaining rewarding and satisfying to play.
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Related games: Castles in Spain requires building down in the tableau to be with alternate colours, and in most versions of this game all but the top card of each column in the tableau begins face-down. Quite similar is Martha and its harder sibling Stewart, where every second card in the tableau begins face-down. Good Measure is a more difficult variation of Baker's Dozen, since it uses ten columns of five cards each, and has more strict rules for building on the foundations; Canister has only eight columns with even more cards on each.
Bisley: Special mention can be made of Bisley, which is a classic but more difficult game in this family. In Bisley you use a tableau of thirteen columns of four cards each to build upwards on the four Aces, and simultaneously build downwards on the Kings whenever they become available.
CANFIELD
Overview: Canfield is one of the all time greats among solitaire games, and is a genuine classic. Also known under names like Demon, Fascination, or Thirteen, you'll find that it appears in almost every book with solitaire card games. According to legend, the game owes its origin and name to Richard A. Canfield, a 19th century gambler. For an initial outlay of $52, Canfield offered gamblers a reward of $5 for every card successfully played to the foundations, with a $500 pot for successfully playing all 52 cards to the foundations. Anything more than 10 cards played to the foundations would get you out of the red, but in most cases the game favoured the casino, indicating how hard the game can be to play.
Game-play: Game-play is much like Klondike, with the aim of building up all four suits in order. The key difference is the starting set-up, because there is a single face-down reserve of 13 cards (sometimes called the "demon"), with a 14th card turned up as the first foundation card. The foundations begin with the cards corresponding to the rank of this initially turned up card (rather than the usual Ace), and the idea is to build upwards from there, if necessary "turning the corner" from King through to Ace. Also different from Klondike is the starting tableau, which consists of just four face up cards alongside the reserve. The stock is turned up three cards at a time as in standard Klondike, with as many re-deals as necessary. Any space that appears in the tableau is immediately filled by the top card of the reserve pile, which is always kept face-up.
Variations: Given how challenging it can take to win a standard game of Canfield, a number of variants exist that simplify the game slightly, increasing your chances of playing cards to the foundations. Canfield's gambling house is said to have given players the option of going through the stock three times when dealing three cards at a time, or just a single time when dealing one card at a time, and it has been estimated that most games would only see 5 or 6 cards played. The game becomes slightly easier with Canfield Rush, where the cards are first dealt three at a time, then two at a time, and then individually in a final deal of the stock.
My thoughts: Canfield does have a strong connection to Klondike, but has a smaller tableau to work with, while also providing a much smaller number of cards (only 13) that are face-down in the tableau at the start of the game. The real key is finding a way to make these cards available and get these into the game. Given how hard the original game is, I prefer playing with the rule that allows dealing of cards individually, and cycling through the stock as often as necessary. Some of the related games discussed below, such as Rainbow and Storehouse, significantly improve your winning chances, and can be very satisfying to play. Certainly if you enjoy Klondike, this game is a great next step to try.
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Related games: In Rainbow (also called Rainbow Canfield), cards may be built downwards in the tableau regardless of suit (some versions still require alternating colour), making it much easier to manipulate cards and work your way through the stock and the reserve. Additionally, cards from the reserve aren't automatically added to the tableau, giving you more control and adding strategic options. In most versions of Storehouse (also called Thirteen-Up), you get an additional head-start by placing your initial four cards on the foundations at the outset, while cards from the stock are turned up one at a time. The big difference in this game is that you must build down by suit in the tableau, which really changes how the game feels, because playing from the tableau to the foundation usually involves a whole string of cards at once. Eagle Wing (also called Thirteen-Down) is somewhat similar to Storehouse, and has a uniquely shaped tableau. Dutchess (sometimes spelled Duchess), is a Canfield style game that adds a reserve of four fans, while American Toad is an easy-to-win version of Canfield with two decks.
Two Players: Canfield has been adapted for a multi-player game under the common name Pounce, and is also known as Nerts or Racing Demon. A commercial version exists under the name Solitaire Frenzy, and the published game Dutch Blitz is also a close relative. In Pounce, each player uses his own deck and tableau, playing simultaneously and real time onto shared foundations, with the goal is to be the first to get rid of your reserve pile. You can play with as many as half a dozen players or more, and the frenzied action typically proves to be enormous fun!
FAN GAMES (La Belle Lucie)
Overview: La Belle Lucie, also called in English "Lovely Lucy" or "Beautiful Lutecia", is a classic representative of the family of games typically described as Fan games. It's one of the more difficult games in the genre to win, and thus some of its variants and closely related games have arguably become more popular than Lovely Lucy itself. But this classic game of French origin is a good archetype of the genre, and you'll find it included in most books with patience games, and on most solitaire websites and software. Effectively this game is just a tableau of 17 columns of three cards each (plus a column with a single card), but the fan-style arrangement with horizontally overlapping cards that is traditionally associated with this game is a signature feature.
Game-play: A single deck is dealt face-up into 17 "fans", each consisting of three overlapping cards, plus an 18th column with just one card. Only one card can be transferred within the tableau at a time, so sequences can't be moved, and building happens downwards according to suit. Empty spaces in the tableau may not be filled. The aim is to build up four foundations by suit from Ace to King. Under the most commonly played rules, once you are unable to place or move any more cards, you take all the cards from the tableau and redeal them into fans with three cards each; there are two such re-deals.
Variations: Three Shuffles and a Draw (also called Lovely Lucy With a Draw) adds a merci play, where you can move a single blocked card once during the course of the game. While La Belle Lucie is sometimes called The Fan, this is also the name of a popular variation which allows exposed Kings to be played to empty spaces in the tableau, making the game less frustrating and far more achievable. Trefoil is identical to La Belle Lucie except that the Aces begin on the foundations, resulting in an initial tableau of just 16 fans.
My thoughts: This is a terrific single-deck game, because you have perfect information given that all the cards are face-up, and the large number of columns/fans means that buried cards have at most only a couple of cards blocking them. La Belle Lucie is very difficult to win under the original and strict rules, especially because empty fans may not be refilled, and cards beneath an unplayable exposed card (e.g. a King) are permanently inaccessible. The merci rule that lets you unblock one card is virtually essential, and usually a standard way of playing, but even after two redeals the game can still be hard to finish, depending on the draw. Some of the variants and related games that simplify things slightly are more satisfying. This is one of my favourite solitaire games to play with a single deck, since it is less luck-dependent than many other popular single-deck games like Klondike.
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Related games: One of the more popular games in this family is Super Flower Garden, where building downward is permitted regardless of suit; with good play under these rules the game can be completed almost every single time. Shamrocks takes the essence of La Belle Lucie, but implements several other changes to make the game much easier: Kings are moved to the bottom of the fan during the deal, and you may build up as well as down on the fans (which are limited in size to 3 cards) and can ignore suits; to prevent it being too easy there are no redeals.
Similar games: Games in the Baker's Dozen family (covered previously above) are sometimes classified as Fan games as well, because the game-play is quite similar, with 13 columns/fans of four cards each, but the absence of re-deals gives them a different feel. Bristol is often played with a tableau consisting of fans as well, but there are only eight fans of three cards each, while the rest of the deck functions as a stock that you deal onto three waste or reserve piles. Despite some hidden information, those who appreciate Fan games are likely to appreciate Bristol as well. Intelligence is a two-deck game in the style of La Belle Lucie, while the relatively easy two-deck game Buffalo Bill relies on reserve cells rather than tableau building.
CASTLE GAMES (Beleaguered Castle)
Overview: Beleaguered Castle is the most famous member of what can be called the "Castle" family of solitaire games, and is a classic game that you'll find in most books of Patience. This game sometimes also goes under the alternative names of Laying Siege and Sham Battle. It is an excellent example of an open solitaire game, because all the cards are dealt face-up at the start, so you begin with perfect information.
Game-play: With the four Aces placed in a vertical column as foundations, the rest of the cards are dealt face-up into four rows of six overlapping cards each on either side, forming a tableau consisting of two "wings". As expected, the goal is to build all four foundations in order from Ace through King. Cards may only be moved within the tableau one at a time, rather than in stacks, so only the end card of each row within the tableau may be moved, either to the foundations, to another row in descending sequence regardless of suit, or to an empty space in the tableau.
Variations: In Streets and Alleys, the Aces don't begin in the starting foundations at all, but are included in the initial tableau of dealt cards, so that the four rows on the left side of the foundations each consist of seven cards each rather than six. Thomas Warfield's Stronghold adds a storage cell to Streets and Alleys, to give more strategic options for movement. Citadel improves Beleaguered Castle's initial position slightly by allowing you to build straight to the foundations during the deal, while Selective Castle lets you choose the rank of the foundation cards after the deal. Some solitaire sites offer a Beleaguered Cities variant (sometimes simply called Castle), which makes the game much easier by allowing you to build in ascending or descending sequence (still regardless of suit), and this ensures that you can nearly always complete the game successfully.
My thoughts: Despite the unusual signature "wing" setup, strictly speaking the mechanics of Beleagured Castle are like most other solitaire games (especially Forty Thieves, see below), but with a single deck, eight columns of six cards each, and no stock. The strict rules for movement and building within the tableau make this a very difficult game to complete successfully. Ideally you want to be able to get one of the rows entirely clear, to give you more options for manipulation within the tableau. Even so, being only able to move the outside card on each row is quite limiting, and as a result you will often be thwarted by the luck of the draw early on, especially if high cards bury some lower cards, and so this classic game can be somewhat frustrating. You'll often find yourself quickly redealing and starting over, hoping for better luck the next time around; one advantage of a digital version is that you can keep redealing until you get a deal that seems like a reasonable starting draw. The simpler variant Castle is a good place to start with this game, since it increases your chances of success drastically.
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Related games: Fortress operates on a similar concept, but there are five rows on each side of the foundations instead of four. In addition, you are restricted to building on the same suit, but you may build in ascending or descending sequence. Aces start within the tableau (thus two rows have six instead of five cards). The variant Chessboard applies the same principle as Selective Castle, by letting you choose the rank of the foundation cards after the deal (building around the corner on the foundations as required), in order to take better advantage of the cards you have been dealt. Zerline is a German game where Queens are high, and helps by adding a four-card storage area.
SIR TOMMY GAMES
Overview: Sir Tommy (Old Patience, Try Again, Numerica) is also known as Old Patience, which reflects its origin as the oldest known patience game, and possible ancestor of all others. The average person may not have heard of it, but it deserves a place on this list because this is a game from which so many other solitaire games are derived, including many more familiar ones. It is at the head of a family of games where cards in the tableau can't be moved after being placed, and that's a unique quality that also makes it quite challenging to win.
Game-play: Suits are irrelevant in this game, and the aim is to build four foundations from Ace to King. You deal the deck face-up one at a time, and the tableau has four columns (or waste piles); dealt cards can be played on any column but cannot be moved from one to another. So while it's still technically a building game because you are building up the foundations, there is no packing in the tableau to assist you with this.
Variations: Some variants (e.g. Auld Lang Syne, Tam O'Shanter) turn Sir Tommy into even an simpler luck-based game nearly impossible to win, while others are extremely strategic like the well-known Calculation. Amazons is an interesting version played with a smaller deck that has the goal of building to the Queens (= Amazons), and is best played digitally given the amount of redealing. Other variants make the game easier (and for me, more enjoyable) by increasing the number of tableaus (Strategy, Lady Betty, and Last Chance) or redeals (Acquaintance), or make it more interesting by requiring building by colours (Puss in the Corner, and Colours, Alternate).
My thoughts: Good players can win as many as 20% of their games, and storing cards in the right order on the four columns is critical, because you want to avoid having low valued cards blocked by higher ones, or having too many cards of the same number in one column. Reserving a pile for Kings and another for high cards is often a good strategy. Even so, it's a hard game to win and can be frustrating. I recommend trying some of the easier variants as a way to enjoy this game; there's a good reason so many variants have evolved from the original over time. It's a large family that includes many solitaire variants, and these are well worth trying and exploring.
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Related games: Several two-deck games are in the Sir Tommy family, including Fanny, Frog (also called Toad), Fly, and Grand Duchess, most of which involve using a reserve. Several two-deck games use similar mechanics but operate with a larger 20 card tableau in the style of the simple game Carpet, but involve building both up and down on the foundations; for me personally these are the most fun of all Sir Tommy variants, and include Twenty (also called Sly Fox), Colorado, Grandmother's Patience (also called Grandmamma's Game), and Grandfather's Patience - all excellent games.
Calculation: Calculation deserves special mention, and has become a classic in its own right. What makes it unique is that the foundations are built up by one, two, three, and four respectively, and it requires a lot of skill. The variant Betsy Ross is more luck-dependent but is also easier to complete successfully.
YUKON
Overview: Yukon first appeared in a 1949 book on solitaire games, and has since exploded in popularity. This single deck solitaire game was partly inspired by Klondike, which is of course the most popular solitaire card game of all time. But because Yukon has no stock and more flexible rules for movement of stacks within the tableau, it allows a lot more scope for thinking.
Game-play: While inspired and indebted to Klondike, Yukon creates a game with a very different feel by removing the requirement that stacks of cards must be in alternating sequence in order to be moved. In other words, you can move any stack to a legal card within the tableau, regardless of the sequence of the cards in that stack. While this makes the game easier, another significant change makes it harder: there is no stock that you deal. So all the cards are in the tableau at the outset, and you'll have to manipulate the tableau cleverly to uncover face-down cards and build all four suits onto the four foundations from Ace through King.
Variations: To make Yukon slightly easier, a couple of variants alter things slightly to simplify the gameplay, such as removing the requirement that only Kings can be placed in an empty space in the tableau (this variation is sometimes called Great River). Some digital implementations give the option of reducing the number of suits used, such as in Yukon One Suit, which you can nearly always win, while still having to think carefully.
My thoughts: The rules for manipulating the tableau give you more options than Klondike, and thus more to consider and think about. Both Yukon and Russian Solitaire (mentioned under "related games" below) are extremely popular solitaire games, because they are simultaneously more challenging and more rewarding than Klondike style games. Skill plays more of a role, and there are players so dedicated to Yukon that they have played it thousands of times. In regular Yukon you can expect to win as much as 1 in 4 games, but the added level of difficulty in Russian Solitaire reduces that to as little as once in 20 games. The key is to bring the face-down cards into play as soon as possible.
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Related games: Russian Solitaire makes Yukon harder by only allowing you to build down in the tableau with cards of the same suit, instead of in alternating colours, and it is an extremely popular game in its own right. This requirement is also in place with Alaska, but may build in ascending or descending order in the tableau, which makes it easier to win than Russian Solitaire. Australian Patience is another popular spin-off from Yukon, and adds a stock which is dealt one at a time, while the entire 7x4 tableau starts face up; however this can feel like it's more about careful observation than decision making. Many other Yukon inspired games exist, including games which add things like a reserve, storage cells, or extra decks.
Scorpion: Special mention should be made of popular game Scorpion, which some categorize as part of the Yukon family, and the rules for moving unarranged stacks in Yukon may even originate in Scorpion. However, Scorpion uses Spider's requirement that stacks from Ace to King of the same suit must be assembled within the tableau before being discarded. Scorpion variants include Wasp, Three Blind Mice, Chinese Solitaire, and others.

== Games With Two Decks ==

FORTY THIEVES (Napoleon at St Helena)
Overview: Forty Thieves is a popular and classic game played with two decks, and is also included in most books with patience games. It also goes under the alternate name Napoleon at St Helena (not to be confused with a different solitaire game called "Saint Helena" or "Napoleon's Favorite"), and tradition says that this is the solitaire game Napoleon played while in exile on the island of St Helena. The game also goes under other names, including Roosevelt at San Juan. Its simple rules means that many variations exist, many of which are among the more strategic and satisfying versions of solitaire games that you'll find anywhere. Carefully working through the stock pile and manipulating the discard pile are a big element of successful play.
Game-play: A tableau is dealt with ten columns, each with four overlapping and face-up cards. Strict tableau building rules apply, because only the single top card of each column may be moved, and only onto a card that is the next highest rank of the same suit; any card can be placed into a space that becomes available in the tableau. The remaining stock of 64 cards is turned up one card at a time, with no redeals. The goal is to get all the cards onto the eight foundations from Ace through King in each suit.
Variations: In its strict and classic form, even with good play Forty Thieves is difficult to win, so many variants exist that seek to make the game easier. In some of these, the Aces begin as starting foundations ( San Juan Hill). In others, the tableau is not built down by cards of the same suit but by alternating colours (e.g. Streets), or by any suit other than its matching one (Indian). Some variations allow entire sequences of cards to be moved (Josephine, Forty Bandits, Ali Baba), or combine this with having tableau building in alternating colours (Number Ten, Rank and File, Emperor) or tableau building in any suit (Little Forty). In other variations, multiple redeals of the stock are permitted.
My thoughts: Game-play is very tight in the strict form of the game. It's not always a good idea to play a card just because you can, because you may block cards within the tableau that you need. You also need to pay close attention to duplicates, since two decks are in play. As a result, careful planning and consideration is needed. Unused stock typically ends up into an increasingly large face-up discard pile, but in the latter parts of the game skilful play often makes it possible to dig back through this and complete the game. This usually proves most satisfying when playing with one of the variants that makes the game slightly easier, to increase your chances of pulling out a win. Even with these variants, you'll have to play skillfully, making the Forty Thieves family of solitaire games one of the more popular choices for those who like a longer experience that is thoughtful, challenging, and yet solvable, and where skill plays even more of a role than luck.
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More variations: Instead of 10 tableau piles, some variations increase this to 12 piles (Blockade, Napoleon's Square, Corona) or 13 piles (Lucas, Waning Moon); or decrease it to 9 piles (Maria) or 8 piles (Forty and Eight, Congress, Parliament, Diplomat, Red and Black), each with different combinations of rules for tableau building. Games with just 6 piles (Blind Alleys, Pas Seul) or 5 piles (Double Rail) begin to feel much like Klondike.
Related games: Many other games take the Forty Thieves style concept and adjust it in more significant ways. In Interchange (more difficult), Breakwater, and Alternations, the initial tableau includes face-down and face-up cards. The very popular Thieves of Egypt begins with a pyramid shaped tableau. Busy Aces is a straight forward game in the style of Forty Thieves that is at the head of its own family, which includes the much simpler Fortune's Favor, a simple game ideal for beginners. For a terrific overview of all the Forty Thieves related games and their different nuances, consult Thomas Warfield's excellent complete guide to Forty Thieves types games.
CONCLUSION
This is by no means a comprehensive list that includes all builder-style solitaire games. But along with Klondike, Spider, and FreeCell, these seven additional games - Baker's Dozen, Beleaguered Castle,Canfield, Forty Thieves, La Belle Lucie, Sir Tommy, Yukon, and Forty Thieves - and the many related games that belong to their families, are the most common and popular forms of solitaire games that involve building. They have inspired many solitaire games like them, and have stood the test of time well.
If you enjoy Klondike, which is the most popular version of solitaire in the world, then Canfield and Yukon are natural games to explore next. Beleaguered Castle can be a little frustrating due to the strict rules and dependency on the luck of the draw, and even the other games in its family can be quite challenging. I'd recommend it only for more experienced and dedicated players, and would instead suggest next exploring Baker's Dozen and the games in the "Fan" family inspired by La Belle Lucie.
Their style of play is somewhat similar to Forty Thieves and its many siblings, which double the number of cards in the game by adding a second deck, and also adds a stock pile and discard pile you must manage. Forty Thieves type games are among the best you'll find for those who like a more challenging, thoughtful, and longer solitaire experience.
Author's note: I first published this article at PlayingCardDecks here.

I finished a successful Glenn playthrough last night and afterwards I was thinking about just how bonkers his achievements were and how he would be regarded by history. So, I wrote this, exploring just that kind of thing! Spoilers for the President Glenn path obviously, and I fudged the fact that content ends and leaves things dangling as him winning a third term in office.
Coming into office off the back of the most disruptive decade in American politics since the Civil War, inheriting the legacy of the astonishingly unpopular and constitutionally questionable policies of Strom Thurmond, the expectation was that the incumbent President would be one who would have to devote all their efforts to simply stabilizing the situation and beginning to restore some measure of trust and confidence in US politics. A competent, cautious man might have attempted just that. John Herschel Glenn Jr. was not that man - Glenn was rather a man of vaulting ambitions and boundless optimism, who believed that the only way for trust and confidence to be restored was with the boldest vision he could imagine.
Glenn’s rise to the Presidency was almost as meteoric as the event which made him a household name; the veteran of the Second World War who went on to become a test pilot and thereafter the first man in space recalls he had no political ambitions before President Nixon’s decision to defund NASA in the wake of the Reich’s arrival on the moon in 1962. Glenn was, to be sure, distraught by losing this milestone achievement to the Germans, but he was far more upset by what he regarded as Nixon’s total capitulation on all matters of space which stemmed from Kollner’s historic steps on our lunar neighbor. Even after this his political ambitions were not about election but in his attempt to make enough of a fuss to see NASA’s budget and remit protected, but it was soon clear to him that he could not achieve that in his existing capacities no matter how hard he tried. Here we see the twin, seemingly opposed character traits that would define Glenn’s presidency; he came to the conclusion that he could only make the changes he thought necessary in elected office, preferably at a very high level, in the course of an afternoon, but once the decision was made he drew plans that spanned decades and exhibited the utmost patience in pursuing them.
Glenn knew he would struggle to reach the Presidency from a standing start, and he further believed that even if he made it his lack of political experience would mean he would use the office inefficiently and be vulnerable to political manipulation by more experienced actors. So, he set his sights at a lower level, and announced his campaign for the governorship of Ohio in mid-1962. Ohio’s favorite son would immediately attract criticism for what was regarded by many as a vanity project, but Glenn had prepared for this possibility - he had spent weeks working with friends, his wife Annie, and a small cadre of political advisors to draw up a suite of plans that he could pursue as governor, plans which were the kind of effective low-level policies that would help the average Ohioan in their day to day life. Storming out of the gates with a primary campaign to highlight these ideas, he rapidly quelled enough of the criticism to be seen as a legitimate and credible candidate, and that was all he needed. Though joining the Republican Party he was able to win over enough of the Democrat wing of the RDs to become the candidate for Governor, usurping presumptive candidate Jim Rhodes, and took up the race against the NPP. It was a close race - by the time November rolled around, the Nixon government had got its first taste of scandal and controversy, and it dented RD prospects nationwide. By less than a single percentage point, John Glenn won the race and had taken his first small step on his long plan.
As it happened, the events of the 60s would prove so disruptive that Glenn’s timetable could be rapidly accelerated. Conversations with his early allies have told us he originally intended on pursuing the Presidency in 1972 or 76, depending on the political landscape at the time — he intended to secure his base of support, make the political contacts needed, and gain extensive experience. That America would enter the costly war in South Africa and the less costly, but still unpopular, war in Indonesia was unknown at this point, but it was only the tip of the iceberg of what would occur in that tumultuous decade. Barely a year and three months into his Governorship, the Presidency would be rocked as Nixon resigned before he could be impeached, and worse, his Vice President John Fitzgerald Kennedy would be assassinated just weeks later by a disgruntled Guyenese nationalist. JFK’s death would put the Presidency in the hands of John McCormack, who had never had ambitions on the office and saw his role purely as one of salving the country’s hurt and trying to bind the Republican-Democrats back together going into the November elections of 1964. He failed dreadfully on both counts; his pardon of Nixon was widely derided, and JFK’s brother Robert Francis Kennedy would defect to the NPP over Nixon’s vetoing of the Civil Rights Act — RFK had been JFK’s Chief of Staff and closest friend, and he was strongly motivated to see through his beloved brother’s vision. The NPP had struggled to find the kind of charismatic leader they would need, and Bobby Kennedy was the perfect choice. The race was hard fought but RFK became President with over 360 EC votes, a healthy margin, and the political landscape was drastically shaken up.
Though not nearly as shaken up as it would be a few years later. Bobby Kennedy’s policies were inherited in part from his brother, and he had a core of rage that held the Nixon Administration responsible for Jack’s death. This anger drove him to being a devoted progressive, spurred by the NPP-C wing of the party, and he enacted policy after policy to drive through a comprehensive Civil Rights Act in 1967, an act Glenn voiced support for and said “If I were in the Senate, I’d be voting for this. Bobby Kennedy might be from a different party from me but he’s a good man with some good ideas.” And a few weeks later, RFK would meet the same fate as his brother, gunned down by a fanatic segregationist as he exited a hotel with his own Vice President, Hubert Humphrey.
The country was stunned. Just as sunlight had seemed to break through the clouds, and the Kennedy administration was working to fully implement his Civil Rights policies while also continuing some economic reforms, another President, another Kennedy, had been killed in America’s streets. Not only that but the VP was dead too, leaving the succession to someone who was never on a Presidential ticket for the second time in four years. Strangely, the next in line declined the role, refusing to elaborate on his reasons, meaning it fell another rank to the South Georgia Senator Strom Thurmond. (It would not be until 1987 that the explanation for this and Thurmond’s blackmail efforts would come to light — his already disgraced name falling even further, especially in an era of rapidly increasing acceptance of gay rights. It would also spark countless conspiracy theories that Thurmond had arranged the assassinations himself, though there has never been any corroborating evidence to that effect.)
President Thurmond had one mission and one mission only - to roll back the Civil Rights Act and all associated policies. He would ensure that he restored and reinforced segregation, Jim Crow, and all the other racist policies that RFK had almost killed, and he had no care for what the cost to the law or Constitution might be. Though initially popular and viewed with cautious optimism for his tender eulogy of Bobby Kennedy and hints that he considered himself a caretaker president akin to McCormack, he moved rapidly behind the scenes to secure his power and enact every policy and pass every bill he could in pursuit of his goals. The Congress, shellshocked by the last few years, seemed to have given him a more-or-less free hand as he appealed to the need for leadership and to show a united American government to the people in order to restore faith. He was also completely unafraid to use Executive Orders in whatever capacity he thought he might benefit from. By the end of Thurmond’s presidency barely a year after he took the office, the Constitutional order had been upturned. Maps were redistricted with offensive transparency. Those Thurmond considered politically opposed to him - minorities of all kinds as well as Republican and NPP-C voters - were disenfranchised to the best of his ability. Most infamously of all, and the policy which pushed America from protests to riots in all 49 states, he used an Executive Order to stack the Supreme Court with four additional Judges, all of them arch-conservatives who would reliably rule in favor of the segregationist, anti-black cause.
Amidst all this, Glenn’s opportunity had come early and he seized it with both hands. Painting himself as a moderate who disdained most political labels in favor of effective policies regardless of their origins, he was quickly adopted as the exact kind of all-American guy needed by the Republican-Democrats. He had been a competent and well-liked Governor that had pushed Ohio’s quality of life up, poverty rates down, and enticed lucrative aerospace and other high-tech industries to the state. He was an American war hero, and an American hero generally, his name still carrying plenty of currency from the old feats in NASA. In short he ticked all the boxes — Existing fame, proven record (if shorter than some would like), mass appeal, visionary even as he was a level-headed straight talker. Exactly what the country needed, or so the RDs gambled.
Meanwhile the NPP was riven between the Centrists and Far Right, the latter eventually claiming ascendancy as their ranks were filled by defecting Democrats who were now looking to the best place to secure what Thurmond had set in motion. Glenn would thus go up against the Far Right’s Margaret Chase Smith. Much has been made about to what extent Smith’s sex factored into her defeat, and certainly scholarship has demonstrated it played a role, but the scope of Glenn’s victory on Election Day was tremendous and far more than could be accounted for by sexism alone. Winning over 400 EC votes, Glenn came into office with one of the strongest mandates in American history, and he wasted no time.
Though restoring NASA had always been John Glenn’s dearest purpose, and his earliest moves were centered around setting that institution back into motion, he had no shortage of other challenges and ideas to meet them. Indeed, while NASA busied itself with actually using its new influx of cash to rebuild, rehire or hire new staff, and overhaul its facilities, Glenn pursued something that made a far greater difference to the man and woman in the street, a project Glenn termed “Closing the empathy deficit”. Long argued about by American administrations and their Congresses, Glenn had seen how harmful the absence of a solid safety net was to Ohioans, and Ohio was one of the union’s richer states at the time.
Though in regular contact with NASA’s director and personal friend James Webb, Glenn had no distractions on the legislative front. He pursued reform with a zeal, and within mere months had secured the passage of the most comprehensive reform to American benefits in history. Pensions were increased and protected, and poor Americans would still be able to claim pension sufficient for a dignified retirement even if they had not been able to pay in whilst younger. Medicare was a transformative healthcare coverage policy that provided coverage to all Americans over the age of 65 and all Americans with disabilities, and implemented controls on insurance companies outside of that to help insulate people from predation or excessive prices. The Americans with Disabilities Act (1969) was also implemented as part of this legislative fusillade, which Glenn insisted must include those who acquired disabilities during their lives as well as those who were disabled from birth, as some in Congress had argued against. Glenn’s wife, Annie, had grown up with an extreme stutter that left her preferring to communicate without speaking, and the President’s disability policy is widely acknowledged to have been at the least inspired by her, and perhaps to some extent guided by her advice and experiences.
By the summer of 1969, then, Glenn had already implemented large changes to America, and his popularity steadily rose. In Congress, he was usually disliked by the NPP-FR and struggled to attract votes from Democrats even though they were notionally a part of his party, but he had massive support from the Republicans and found a common cause with the NPP-C. The rising Social Democratic movement of America was represented by this wing of the NPP and were more than happy to support Glenn’s reforms, even as many of them wished he’d go further. Joyfully, the President was able to return his attentions to the institution he most loved, NASA. After months of work the institution was ready to go, and Glenn authorized the commencement of America’s return to space with the Minerva Program. The unmanned Miverva I was prepared, launched, and America once again broke the bonds of Earth and had a presence in space. It was well understood that even going so far as to get a man back in orbit would be a serious undertaking and NASA would need, in essence, practice before it could attempt that. Minerva was only the first step in this long road, but it was one that boosted NASA’s profile and popularity. Soon new missions were planned, and before long there seemed to be a launch almost daily. His duties precluded Glenn from viewing them all personally, but there was almost always a TV showing the latest launch in the White House.
Satisfied with the ongoing progress Glenn turned back to Earthly concerns, this time looking at matters relating to nuclear power and weaponry. The destruction of Oahu had made Americans deeply leery of anything with the word “nuclear” in its name, but President Glenn had been convinced of the merits of nuclear power and worked hard to bring that word to the public. Here, he struggled, even after recruiting the Disney Corporation to produce educational propaganda — tedious in the extreme in the eyes of kids, but lauded by parents for being a balanced, unsensational, and honest look at the topic. He faced significant opposition from mining and power concerns, however, and though successful in the abstract, nuclear power never really took off under the Glenn presidency the way he had hoped. Militarily, he authorized a significant increase to America’s stockpiles, expensive but hardly something that most would argue against, given the ongoing threats of the Nazi Reich and the Empire of Japan. That he had a greater plan in mind was known only to himself and a couple of closest aides.
It was at this point that almost everything was derailed. In the Middle East, decades of Italian rule and control came to a violent and sudden end as revolutions and civil wars ripped through the entire Arab world, and then beyond. Violence occurred in Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the Gulf States, Iraq, and Iran, all of it amid and exacerbating a tremendous spike in the prices of crude oil. The Oil Crisis had numerous causes and many dimensions, but the effect for John Glenn was that it put everything else on the back burner. None of his ambitions or plans mattered a whit if the country ground to a halt, and that’s exactly what it was doing, as people couldn’t fill their cars and industries couldn’t keep the lights on. Emergency measures were implemented, including price controls, then rationing, massive investment in the Texan oil fields, and similarly massive investments into synthetic oil production. It was a chaotic period lasting months, but in time the situation stabilized and the domestic oil situation became a tolerable one. Belts were tightened countrywide, and smaller cars rapidly became the vogue for new buyers while existing plans for gas-guzzlers were scrapped by companies like Ford, but the worst of the crisis had been kept from America’s shores.
And then, Americans were back in space. Only in orbit at first under the Daedalus Program, but then the Diana Program aimed for the moon, taking up where the Apollo Project had been looking just before Nixon aborted it. Americans could not be first to the moon, but they could reach it, and that was almost as important. Regrettably, the first great tragedy struck the space program during this period - Diana II, intended to perform a lunar flyby and return to Earth, exploded in flight 194 seconds after liftoff. The three astronauts aboard died, and immediately the political and media classes pounced on Glenn. Support for NASA drained precipitously, and questions about why money and lives were being spent in this way were widespread. The President managed to divert the issue somewhat by lionizing the deceased, and when one of the widows spoke up in favor of continuing the project and how her husband would have wanted to carry on, the furor abated somewhat. NASA was now on notice, but it was not doomed.
If there were fears Diana II would hurt Glenn’s re-election chances, they were swept away in a tidal wave of support for the man himself. A growing number of people supported the President primarily for his space program, referred to as the ‘geeks’, but the great majority regarded it more ambivalently. To some it was a positive thing but not the priority, whilst to others it was the President’s pet project that could be tolerated as long as he didn’t get lost in the clouds. But the first Glenn term had shown he had no such shortcomings. SSA, Medicare, and the ADA had transformed the lives of millions of Americans. He had not yet fully reckoned with the legacy of Thurmond, but things were certainly better for black Americans than they had been four years earlier, and Glenn was clearly no committed segregationist or racist - thus he carried the vote across the entire country, with the sole exception of California, who were strong supporters of the NPP and their hardline goal of reclaiming the Treaty Ports and revenging America against Japan. That was the sole state that went for Jeane Kirkpatrick, resulting in an EC vote of 494 for Glenn and 40 for Kirkpatrick.
Just months later Diana IV would vindicate the President, the space program, and NASA. Buzz Aldrin was not the first man on the moon, but he and Michael Collins were the first Americans, and when they planted the flag on February 13th 1973 it established that the United States was not only back in action, but a serious contender for space. It was smiles all round as the men returned to parades and dinners and events the likes of which Americans hadn’t seen in decades, and John Glenn’s boyish glee was visible to all. But it was a real achievement, one that seemed to restore a sense of confidence to the American people, and more people moved from simply letting the President have his toys to support, and more moved from casual support to strong support, and more and more young people proudly proclaimed themselves geeks while speaking of internships at NASA, JPL, and the other centers of American aerospace.
Glenn’s second term saw a new wave of domestic legislation, for despite the continuing claims of opponents he had no desire to see things on the ground slide backwards. First he looked to ongoing problems in healthcare; whilst Medicare was largely working well and its initial problems had been ironed out, there were lingering difficulties. Foremost among these was in drug pricing. Seeking to gain ever more profits, Big Pharma had begun jacking up prices at an unsustainable rate, leaving more and more Americans unable to pay for their medication and taking bigger chunks out of Medicare into the bargain. John Glenn was incensed by this and it has been argued since that this was the real moment of his ‘radicalization’, which drove him from a reformist to someone more aligned with the NPP-C than his own party. As the pharma companies began funding anyone opposed to Glenn and the RDs, speaking out on the disastrous consequences they foresaw, and accused him of fascistic overreach, he deployed everything he had to crush Big Pharma’s opposition, and when they began to fear he was winning and offered a compromise that would cover price controls on prescription medication but not others, he rejected it out of hand where once, it is believed, he would have taken the deal readily. Major price controls were introduced despite the howls of protest from big business. But Glenn was not done.
Now that he had experienced first-hand the full fury of American business he had lost any love for them, and grown significantly more aligned with criticisms of business practice stemming from the left. In characteristic John Glenn fashion he did not rest after his victory, nor did he even take aim at a small target, but rather he went right for the jugular. He would destroy Right to Work. Right to Work was so named because it was claimed to give Americans the right to work without being forced to join a union to do so, as had been the case in several industries before such legislation was entered. In practice, it was a lynchpin of American business’s strategy of crushing unions altogether, and keeping them weak and ineffective where they could not be eradicated. Glenn was no hardline Bukharinist, but the experiences with the drug price fight had convinced him that big business had too much power and the American worker had too little, and he sought to redress this.
Surprisingly this passed with little trouble. Reeling from the previous fight with the President, big business seemed caught on the back foot, and he had huge popular support. In Congress he was able to count on the full support of the 18 NPP-Cs, one of the two NPP-FRs who was in the body at the time, and 43 of the 45 Republicans. Altogether, with some Democrats also convinced to come over, the vote passed by 68-30, and Right to Work was dead. His subsequent efforts on Social Security were even more intense and more dramatically successful, and there was a massive “Glennite” or “Glennist” tide across the country where, quite aside from questions of nuclear power or space exploration, the President’s domestic proposals found huge support and popularity. Social Security was a tremendous undertaking that far outmatched the scope of his first term reforms, though it was informed by them and incorporated them into a larger structure. Unemployment benefits would rise, healthcare coverage would continue to expand (The first ‘public option’ arose here, with a special insurance provider available to any employee of the Federal Government), and most dramatically, it featured the introduction of a six-hour workday. This last reinvigorated the strength of big business, who threatened opposition and promised doom, but Glenn was never a man to do things by halves and his will was unbreakable, and he had experienced those howls before only to find them impotent in the face of public support. Though initially a step too far for some in his own party, the President appealed directly to the public to write to their Congresspersons and Senators in support of the policy, and the Glennite tide became one of mail that inundated the country’s leadership, convincing them that it was not going to be electoral suicide to support it.
Less noticed, and more of interest to the accountants and lawyers of the country, were efforts to rationalize and better codify the tax system. Though few actual tax rises took place (hence the lack of public interest), the closing of loopholes, simplification of the code, and increasing the ability of Americans to either easily do their own taxes or to allow the government to do it for them helped bring in greater revenues. More importantly was the general state of the economy - after years of work and investment, and a whole host of new measures to help the poorest Americans, the introduction of Social Security was followed just months later by a glowing report on the state of American poverty. Where the poverty rate had peaked as high as 45%, and was in the high 30s when Glenn first took office, it had now dropped to below 25%, a milestone that widely reassured the public of Glenn’s projects and plans while taking the legs out from criticisms of how much was being spent. After all, a richer society means a higher tax take, but you have to invest to get to that society - so the argument went, and so America in the 1970s seemed to prove. Even those who remained in poverty were seeing increases in their quality of life, and abject penury had been cut significantly even where it had not been replaced by affluence.
Meanwhile, the frontier of space was looking to its greatest challenge yet, and NASA had spent its time marshalling resources, conducting the needed research, and experimenting with any number of plans and components and mission profiles. Dianas V and VI had taken Americans to the moon and conducted vital experiments, but Glenn, James Webb, NASA as a whole, and now most of the country, wanted to see America not just take second place or catch up with the Nazis, but to fling themselves into first place. The German Reich had emerged from their bloody Civil War almost a decade ago but the orthodox Fuhrer Bormann had no seeming interest in returning to space, and the collapse of the Reich into the German Civil War of 1963-65 had done major harm to their economic and industrial base, meaning it would have been domestically unpopular to spend money on a race deemed long since won rather than on the ongoing project of rebuilding cities from Hamburg to Munich. Thus, without any real rivals at the time, NASA turned their eyes to the great prize, Mars. The Ares Project began.
Still proceeding at a breakneck pace, Ares was intended to get a human to Mars in just four missions. This has since come in for much criticism, and labeled as a desire to get it done while Glenn was still in office rather than to do it with maximum safety. In the event, however, NASA was either competent enough, lucky enough, or both, to avoid any major disasters like Diana II in the Ares Project. The four missions were to proceed as follows;
Ares I - An unmanned probe designed to both test mission parameters and part performance, whilst also taking the best possible orbital pictures of Mars to examine potential landing sites. Ares II - An unmanned probe which would attempt a landing near a selected landing site, equipped with a rover for scientific work. Ares III - An unmanned package which contained the bulk of materials and supplies needed to establish Hellas I, the prospective Mars base where the astronauts would dwell and work during their time there (The realities of orbital mechanics meant it was far less efficient to try and return immediately than to remain on Mars for a time and return at a later point where planetary alignments were better) Ares IV - The lander unit, return rocket, and the three astronauts would be aboard.
Every mission went perfectly. Every step seemed to fall into place. NASA had attracted the best and brightest by this point, and it paid them well, but they were motivated by more than financial reward now and devoted themselves utterly to the task. Even so, James Webb later said “I don’t want to downplay the extraordinary efforts that everyone at NASA made to achieve this incomparable milestone, but it did feel at times that we were proceeding with the blessing of our great almighty God.” Whether by grace or effort or pure luck, the Ares missions succeeded and even as Glenn was embroiled in scandal back home, the stars continued to inch closer.
That scandal was Glenn’s major defeat that stemmed from his efforts to nationalize the entire country’s uranium mines. His longtime nuclear weapons plan had been proceeding somewhat in the background, seen as simply an unpleasant reality that had to be done by most of the public, who would rather not think about such things when life elsewhere was continuing to improve. The project, even after purchasing Canadian, Australian, and South African uranium in bulk, was facing ongoing shortages of the material. Glenn was pushing for increased production from domestic mines, and seemed to be succeeding, until he got the bill. Rates were double the existing costs, and the mining concerns were quite happy to demand this price from the government under the guise of needing to undertake expansions in pursuit of Glenn’s production demands. Had the price hike been more reasonable, or had the mining concerns come to Glenn to explain and negotiate on such lines, it seems certain the President would have acquiesced. To be slapped with something so extortionate without warning, however, provoked his ire. Normally a man with a strong handle on his emotions, aides would later describe Glenn as “stormy” and “voluminous” over the matter.
By now used to bold moves and cutting Gordian knots, Glenn believed he saw an obvious, if drastic solution. The nation’s defense hinged on the nuclear stockpile. The nuclear stockpile hinged on the production of uranium. Ergo, the production of uranium was a matter of national defense, and the President had the authority to nationalize the industry if it was required for that end. The uproar was immediate and massive, but Glenn persisted, and when no offer at compromise was forthcoming he pushed through with the policy. The mining bosses had a powerful route that other big businesses who had faced Glenn’s policies lacked, however, in the form of legal argument. Given the seriousness of the matter and the importance of national defense it rushed through the courts with incredible speed, before finding itself before the Supreme Court, a place still filled with the packed Judges of Strom Thurmond.
It was not known beforehand which way they would break. On the one hand they were seen as steadfast allies of the NPP, meaning overwhelmingly concerned with matters of defense - but on the other, they were seen as friends of big business as well as leery of the President’s progressive bent. In the end, the 8-5 ruling went for the mining companies thanks to arguments that, as there was no ongoing conflict that directly involved the USA, the President’s attempts to invoke the country’s security could not apply.
Before the day was out, a new offer had landed on the President’s desk, not double but triple the original prices.
It was a massive defeat for the President and one which shook him deeply. He had been America’s golden boy until that moment, a unifier, a man of vision and drive, a man who was trying his best to make life better for ordinary people. He now learned that his ambitions could be checked, and that said roadblocks could be insurmountable. But John Glenn was no Strom Thurmond. Despite his anger, he accepted the ruling and paid the mining companies, and if he was to exact a revenge it would be both done legally and done for the good of the country, not to settle a personal grudge.
This drama was not the best base from which to break with centuries of American tradition and announce his bid for a third term as President, but that is just what President Glenn did to party leaders in early 1976 as they were discussing who would attempt to succeed him to the White House. This caused more hubbub and dissent, but there was never any law against it, and Glenn argued that in the absence of any obvious candidate who could succeed him they may as well stick with the man who was still polling pretty well. The Democrats were incensed by this and driven still further from the Republicans, but the Republican segment of the RDs agreed with his suggestion, on condition that he renounce any possibility of pursuing a fourth term.
The political and media elites had a similar reaction, ranging from outrage to mere grumbling that Glenn would dare attempt something George Washington had made verboten at the country’s founding. But there was still no law against it, and the administration argued that John Glenn came into office with a number of promises, promises he was keeping, but which required one more term to see through to fruition. The NPP opposition decried this as a dangerous overreach, whilst those less opposed to Glenn himself voiced worries that it set an ill precedent and questioned the man’s humility. The NPP would this time abandon the Far Right after two consecutive losses to Glenn, and instead put forward Michael Harrington, who had unsuccessfully pursued their nomination in 1968. This made for an unusually civil and friendly Presidential campaign — Glenn did not go so far as Harrington wanted on most issues, but by this point there was no great gulf ideologically between Glennite Republicanism and the Social Democrats of the NPP-C. After their first debate the viewing figures tanked as the men got dragged into details on broader topics they more or less agreed on, and neither seemed inclined to attempt any serious attacks on the others, though Harrington did try to needle the President over his pursuit of a third term somewhat. Only in foreign affairs did they different significantly, with Harrington making some gains by proposing a nuclear drawdown while pressing Japan conventionally over the Treaty Ports while Glenn maintained his hardline pro-nuclear stance.
The consequence of this was not just a calm election, but one with much lower turnout than any election for decades by percentage. The more radical right stayed home as they saw no candidate for them, as did the harder edge of the Democrats, while the apparently lower stakes than usual meant an awful lot of people decided to enjoy election day with other matters. For the first time Glenn did not achieve a total blowout victory, winning 345 EC votes, but this still gave him a strong mandate to finish his work.
Glenn’s third term would be his most dramatic, and most tense, and would culminate in what has since been argued to be the greatest diplomatic achievement of any American President even as he oversaw America’s greatest scientific achievement. His first task, he decided, was to finish the work of building up American nuclear stocks. He now had an endgame in sight, and was gradually bringing more people into the high-stakes game he intended to play as he moved the pieces into place. A secretive incursion into the remnants of Nazi Africa secured a major uranium mine that helped bolster American production, and it soon became obvious that the US nuclear triad was no longer merely overwhelming, but had become outright apocalyptic. Even if no other powers fired back, the American stockpile alone would be sufficient to end human life on Earth, and most other forms as well. So armed, Glenn began to put out feelers and turned his attention to domestic matters while the diplomats began their work.
Domestically, the legacy of Thurmond had faded over the eight years of Glenn’s presidency. Tactics such as redistricting must be updated as populations move around, and a great many legal challenges had succeeded in weakening all of Thurmond’s projects at local and state levels. His tangle with the Supreme Court had brought the whole affair directly into Glenn’s sights, and he resolved that when he left Washington four years hence, he would leave behind a transparent, honest, and scrupulously clean capital. He had never been a corrupt man himself, and having brought in a fresh staff for almost every role in the White House in 1969 had helped sweep some of the corruption out by itself, but there was still work to do. Investigations were begun, houses were cleaned, and the Senate Ethics Committee was refreshed and newly empowered. A long-term project to review constitutional matters with a goal to preventing excesses like President Thurmond’s or corruption like Nixon’s was established. And in his last major effort against corruption, Glenn banned outright the practice of lobbying, a move which massively diminished the power of corporations or similar actors to unduly influence elected officials where the common American could not. America, finally, emerged from most of the shadows cast by the 1960s and entered a new era of clean and honest politics, one where districts would be drawn to maximize democratic representation rather than suppress it and where the size of the purse had much less influence on the size of the voice.
The Supreme Court provided a major stumbling block, however, and Glenn and his administration were never able to navigate a satisfactory course through that particular issue. If it was allowed to stand, what was to prevent a future President from stacking the court further, even to farcical levels? But there was no apparent way to reduce the size of the Court as it stood, not when doing so would involve the removal of sitting Justices. This was a matter left to a future administration, in the end.
(Continued in comments)

Introduction

Over the past 10 days, we've seen Trump fully indulge his authoritarian impulses in an attempt to stamp out any inkling of facts that he dislikes - whether that be for personal, egocentric reasons or to shore up political strength. One could argue the true "start" of this no-holds-barred dictatorial spree actually stretches back to the Republican acquittal in the impeachment trial. I'd agree with that, too. But 10 days ago Congress was given its first formal warning of the dangers facing our democracy in the next nine months. That Trump launched a war on the intelligence community in response to Americans trying to protect their country from foreign influence speaks volumes to me.
Trump and the Republican party are actively abetting an attack on our nation. "To abet" is to encourage or assist (someone) to do something wrong, in particular, to commit a crime or other offense. Using the immense power given to him by willing Republicans in Congress, Trump is using his authority to hobble the ability of anyone - even America's national security leaders - to stop him and his regime from carrying out Trump's desires, however corrupt, self-serving, or insane.

10 days ago...

The briefing

Ten days ago, on Feb. 13, the intelligence community warned House Intelligence Committee members that Russia is interfering in the 2020 election to try to get Donald Trump re-elected. The briefing, provided by top election security official Shelby Pierson, informed House lawmakers that Russia had “developed a preference” for Trump and would also interfere in Democratic primaries.
Trump - who learned of the briefing from the committee’s Ranking Member Devin Nunes - grew angry at acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Joseph Maguire for providing the information to Congress. The following day, Trump “berated” Maguire for allowing it to take place. According to The New York Times, “Trump was particularly irritated that Representative Adam B. Schiff” was present because the president worried that Schiff would “weaponize” the intelligence about Russia’s support for him.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff responded to Trump’s anger at the briefing: "We count on the intelligence community to inform Congress of any threat of foreign interference in our elections. If reports are true and the President is interfering with that, he is again jeopardizing our efforts to stop foreign meddling. Exactly as we warned he would do."
Side note: A Pardon for Assange
Trump is so desperate to keep Russia’s interference on his behalf a secret, that he may have supported then-Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s offer of a pardon to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in exchange for denying Russian involvement in the Democratic National Committee email leak.

Lawyer Edward Fitzgerald told a court on Wednesday that a witness statement application claimed that then-California representative Dana Rohrabacher went to visit Assange at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London on the instruction of the "President." According to the statement described by Fitzgerald, Rohrabacher's mission was to offer Assange a US pardon, if he would "play ball" by saying the Russians had nothing to do with the leak -- an assertion Assange had previously made.

The White House has denied the claim and distanced itself from Rohrabacher.
The former congressman admits to making the offer to Assange - but does not state that President Trump directed him to do so.

“I spoke to Julian Assange and told him if he would provide evidence about who gave WikiLeaks the emails, I would petition the president to give him a pardon,” Rohrabacher told Yahoo News. “He knew I could get to the president.”

The purge

In retaliation for the briefing, Trump ditched considerations to nominate Maguire to be permanent DNI and quickly replaced him with loyalist Richard Grenell.

• Ominous warning: William H. McRaven, a retired Navy admiral who oversaw the 2011 Navy SEAL raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden, wrote in The Washington Post that “if good men like Joe Maguire can’t speak the truth, we should be deeply afraid.” McRaven continues: “in this administration, good men and women don’t last long. Joe was dismissed for doing his job: overseeing the dissemination of intelligence to elected officials who needed that information to do their jobs...when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security — then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.”

In the days that followed, two other top Intelligence officials announced their departures: (1) Grenell fired the second-highest-ranking official at the ODNI, Andrew Hallman, who had over three decades of intelligence experience; (2) the top lawyer for the ODNI, Jason Klitenic, submitted his resignation, to go into effect in early March. It is unlikely that Klitenic was pushed out, because he played a role in helping prevent the Ukraine whistleblower’s complaint from reaching Congress last year.
Within his first 48 hours, Grenell proceeded to name Kash Patel, former adviser to Rep. Devin Nunes, as a senior adviser in the office of the DNI. As Nunes’ top staffer, Patel authored a memo used to argue that the FBI and DOJ’s probe of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election was actually a deep state plot to take down Trump. Patel also assisted Trump in his pressure campaign against Ukraine: Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and Fiona Hill testified to Congress that Patel “misrepresented” as the NSC expert on Ukraine, which was actually Vindman’s position.

Vindman also testified that he was told Patel had been circumventing normal NSC process to get negative material about Ukraine in front of the president, feeding Trump’s belief that Ukraine was brimming with corruption and had interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Democrats.
That upset Vindman, along with Hill and Bolton, he testified, because they were constantly having to counter that narrative with the president.

Furthermore, there is evidence that Patel may have coordinated the hold on aid to Ukraine to begin with:

...the 300-page impeachment report released by House Intelligence Committee Democrats Tuesday said that Patel spoke with Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal attorney, in the spring, before nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine was suspended.
According to the call records revealed in the report, Patel had a 25-minute phone conversation with Giuliani on May 10. Five minutes after their call, Giuliani spoke with an unidentified number for 17 minutes and then with associate Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian-American who has been accused of illegally funneling foreign money to U.S. political candidates and of aiding Giuliani in his Ukraine investigations.

Acting officials

Richard Grenell, Trump’s newest acting-DNI, has served as U.S. ambassador to Germany since 2018. By taking advantage of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, Trump has been able to maintain a cabinet full of acting officials with little Congressional oversight. If a vacancy occurs in a position that requires Senate confirmation, Trump can appoint someone from any agency who is serving in a different Senate-confirmed position, Grenell, as an ambassador, has already been confirmed by the Senate - though for an entirely different job with entirely different qualifications.
Acting officials can serve in the vacant position for 210 days. If the president submits a nomination to the Senate during that time, the acting officer can continue to perform the office’s duties while the nomination is pending, however long it takes. If the nominee is returned, the officer can work as acting for another 210 days, and then through a second entire nomination process, and a final 210 days if that second nominee is returned. Then, if time runs out, the office must remain vacant until someone is confirmed by the Senate for the job.

• Note: Enforcement of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act is problematic. It is up to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to track time of acting service for each position. If the GAO finds a violation, the office must send a letter to the agency involved, to the president, and to Congress. At this point, the person’s actions have no force or effect - but someone with legal standing needs to bring a lawsuit in order to enforce the provision.

Therefore, because Maguire was serving as an acting official as well, Grenell cannot remain in the acting DNI position past March 11 unless the president formally nominates someone else for the job. The White House and Grenell have acknowledged that a search for a formal nominee is underway. The administration was reportedly considering Rep. Doug Collins for the post… until Collins turned down the job on national television.

• Jan. 2019, Trump said: "I sort of like acting. It gives me more flexibility. Do you understand that? I like acting. So we have a few that are acting. We have a great, great Cabinet." A recent analysis found that acting officials in the Trump administration have held down 22 cabinet and cabinet-level jobs for a combined 2,700 days -- about 1 out of every 9 days across those jobs.
  
• Hypothetical: Let’s say Trump wants to keep Grenell in the position for as long as possible, without nominating him because it is unlikely Grenell would be confirmed, even by the Republican-controlled Senate (see below). As long as Trump nominates someone for the position by March 11, Grenell can serve for however long as the Senate confirmation process takes - typically, around 2 months if the nominee is uncontroversial. That puts Grenell’s end date in mid-May. But Trump could intentionally nominate someone controversial to slow the process, or possibly even instruct his Senate allies to slow-walk the process. That would push out Grenell’s end date into the summer. If the nominee is not confirmed, the 210 day clock resets, giving Grenell an additional six months to serve in his acting capacity. As the end of that six months nears, Trump could put forward a second nominee, during whose confirmation process Grenell can continue to serve in the position. If that nominee fails as well, Grenell has a final six months to be acting-DNI before the position must remain vacant.
  

Sunday update: A Lawfare analysis

The term of art for this process is “manipulation-by-appointment.” Rather than trying to force intelligence analysts to change their views in ways that are politically convenient, this kind of politicization works by making sure their bosses are politically pliable. Manipulation-by-appointment reduces the risk of a public scandal because politicians are less likely to come into conflict with intelligence chiefs. There is no need to strong-arm intelligence agencies to fall in line with policy if the chiefs are already on board. source

Who is Richard Grenell?

Grenell has no experience as an intelligence officer and has only served in government as a communications director for the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. during the George W. Bush administration. After that, Grenell ran a public affairs consultancy and appeared on Fox News. In May 2018 he was confirmed as the ambassador to Germany, where he quickly made enemies:

Grenell’s tenure as ambassador to Germany has been rocky, at least from Berlin’s perspective. He has palled around with far-right groups, spoken openly of a desire to change Angela Merkel’s government, and made statements about U.S. views that sounded like direct orders to sensitive German ears. Last spring, leaders of two German political parties called him a “brat” and a “failure” and urged his ouster.

Additionally, Grenell is an associate of none-other-than Rudy Giuliani. According to Lev Parnas, Victoria Toensing asked Grenell “for advance notice if the Department of Justice were to move to extradite an indicted Ukrainian oligarch, Dmytro Firtash, from whom Giuliani hoped to get compromising information. Parnas also claims Grenell said he would comply.” Firtash is a powerful ally of Vladimir Putin and has assisted the Russian president’s attempt to gain control over Ukraine’s political system and economy. In 2017, the U.S. Justice Department said Firtash was among the “upper echelon associates of Russian organized crime.”
Aside from being remarkably unqualified, it is unclear whether Grenell even has a top-level security clearance or could qualify for one. A report by ProPublica revealed that Grenell used to do consulting work for Moldovan politician Vladimir Plahotniuc, “who is now a fugitive and was recently barred from entering the U.S. under anti-corruption sanctions imposed last month by the State Department.” Grenell failed to disclose this work and did not register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Undisclosed work for a foreign politician would ordinarily pose a problem for anyone applying for a security clearance or a job in a U.S. intelligence agency because it could make the person susceptible to foreign influence or blackmail, according to the official policy from the office that Trump tapped Grenell to lead.
“That’s really easy, he should not have a clearance,” said Kel McClanahan, a Washington-area lawyer specializing in security clearances. “If he were one of my clients and just a normal [federal employee], he would almost assuredly not have a clearance.”
McClanahan said it’s unclear how Grenell could have already gotten a clearance as an ambassador. The House Oversight Committee is investigating whether the Trump administration has overruled career officials in granting security clearances to political appointees.

Aside from his appearances on Fox News, Grenell may have come to Trump’s attention through the patronage of Trump properties. The Washington Post found that the Trump International Hotel in D.C. listed Grenell as a “Gold” level member of the Trump Organization’s “Trump Card” loyalty program in 2018. Kelly Craft, the ambassador to the U.N., was also listed as a gold level member.

Russia’s bet keeps paying off

Moving back to the source of Trump’s fury: The nation knows that Russia prefers Trump to win re-election. When told this, Trump’s Republican allies on the House Intelligence Committee challenged the ODNI’s conclusion. But, as Russia expert Julia Davis points out, Russian state media has never stopped declaring the multitude of ways that Trump’s election has proven “exceedingly beneficial for the Kremlin.”

Russian state media openly gloats about the Kremlin’s influence over Trump, believing that he can endure the exposure without repercussions, and by flaunting the Kremlin’s sway with the White House, Russia further weakens U.S. democracy, which has always been one of its main pursuits.
...Every denial of Russian election interference coming out of the White House brings Putin one step closer to the fulfillment of his goals. Every election-security bill that is blocked by the GOP in the Senate gives advantage to our foreign adversaries—and they are not sick of winning.

We don’t need to rely on Russian state media to tell us that Putin prefers Trump: The Russian president has told us so himself. In 2018, at a joint press conference with Trump in Helsinki, Putin told the press that he wanted Trump to win in 2016 because he believed Trump’s policies would be more beneficial to the Kremlin. "Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal,” Putin said.
Washington Post columnist Max Boot lays out the global benefits Russia enjoys:

Putin doesn’t care about Trump’s sanctions on Iran, which indirectly help Russia by boosting the price of oil. But he does care that Trump has strengthened Russia’s longtime ally in Syria, Bashar al-Assad.
...Trump has facilitated Russian designs not only in Syria but also in Libya, where the Russian-backed strongman Khalifa Hifter is trying to overthrow a United Nations-backed government in Tripoli. The U.S. government ostensibly supports the regime in Tripoli, but Trump called Hifter and gave him a green light for his offensive. Trump is making Russia great again in the Middle East for the first time since Egypt expelled Russian advisers in 1972.
...Far from strengthening NATO, as he now boasts, Trump has weakened it by relentlessly criticizing the alliance and portraying it as a bunch of deadbeats.

Addendum

The purge, act 2

While Trump purges officials he sees as disloyal from the intelligence community, newly-returned staffer John McEntee is busy searching out “Never Trumpers” to punish. According to Axios, “McEntee called in White House liaisons from cabinet agencies for an introductory meeting Thursday, in which he asked them to identify political appointees across the U.S. government who are believed to be anti-Trump.” Those officials “will no longer get promotions by shifting them around agencies.”

• Reminder: McEntee was Trump’s personal aide throughout much of 2017 and into 2018, but was pushed out by then-Chief of Staff John Kelly over gambling debts that threatened his security clearance. Trump reportedly sees McEntee as “the ultimate loyalist” and brought him back at a time when the president “feels he’s surrounded by snakes and wants to clear out all the disloyal people.”

SUNDAY update: The Trump White House and its allies, over the past 18 months, assembled detailed lists of disloyal government officials to oust — and trusted pro-Trump people to replace them — according to more than a dozen sources familiar with the effort. Included in this network of conservative activists assembling purge lists is Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Meanwhile, Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro is on a quest to identify and remove the author known as “Anonymous,” responsible for many anti-Trump op-eds and the book “A Warning.” Last week, it appears that Navarro has zeroed in on a potential suspect: Deputy National Security Adviser Victoria Coates, who is being transferred to the Department of Energy. Though the official White House line doesn’t acknowledge it, The New York Times reported that Coates has been “targeted by a whisper campaign among some pro-Trump conservatives that she was Anonymous.” Allies of Coates deny the allegation.

Several officials who heard Navarro push this said they do not believe Coates is the author and several described her as loyal to the President's agenda. However, the workplace became untenable given these dynamics, so Coates began looking for an exit, officials said, which led to her move to the Energy Department on Thursday. CNN

A weakened National Security apparatus

After last year’s exodus of National Security officials, the entire system is weakened by a lack of expertise and will to stand up for the truth. The NSC has gone from 174 policy positions in October, to fewer than 115 this month. Under Trump’s National Security Adviser, Robert O’Brien, the NSC has been co-opted to building support for Trump’s craziest whims. The New York Times reports:

When President Trump’s national security adviser, Robert C. O’Brien, convenes meetings with top National Security Council officials at the White House, he sometimes opens by distributing printouts of Mr. Trump’s latest tweets on the subject at hand.
The gesture amounts to an implicit challenge for those present. Their job is to find ways of justifying, enacting or explaining Mr. Trump’s policy, not to advise the president on what it should be.
That is the reverse of what the National Security Council was created to do at the Cold War’s dawn — to inform and advise the president on national security decisions.

Most recently, O’Brien proved his willingness to do Trump’s dirty work and weaponize intelligence for political gain. In an interview with Face the Nation, O’Brien states that he hasn’t seen any evidence of Russia seeking to help Trump. But, O’Brien says, it is plausible that Russia is seeking to help the Democrats instead.

O’Brien seized gleefully on reports about Russia and Sanders but rejected reports about Russia and Trump. Russian backing for Sanders, he said, would be “no surprise. He honeymooned in Moscow.”

New: Sunday night updates

On Sunday, Trump made a veiled threat toward House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff while claiming without evidence that the Democrat had leaked information from the Russia briefing on Feb. 13: “Somebody please tell incompetent (thanks for my high poll numbers) & corrupt politician Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff to stop leaking Classified information or, even worse, made up information, to the Fake News Media. Someday he will be caught, & that will be a very unpleasant experience!” tweet
Later, while speaking to reporters, Trump called for an investigation into the leak - more concerned about the public learning of the briefing than he is about Russia’s repeated interference in U.S. elections. “They leaked it, Adam Schiff and his group. They leaked it to the papers and - as usual - they ought to investigate Adam Schiff for leaking that information,” Trump said.
Schiff responded: “Nice deflection, Mr. President. But your false claims fool no one. You welcomed Russian help in 2016, tried to coerce Ukraine’s help in 2019, and won’t protect our elections in 2020.”
 
Originally written for tomorrow's Lost in the Sauce. As such, I tried to keep it as brief as possible... didn't turn out very brief, however, which is why I posted it separately. The scary part is that it could be much longer! It's not exhaustive. For instance, I'll be covering Trump's pardons in the Sauce newsletter tomorrow even though it would fit in this post, too. As The New Yorker summed up: "The point of authoritarianism is to concentrate power in the ruler, so the world knows that all actions, good and bad, harsh and generous, come from a single source."

Quick Note: I post this and other book reviews on a blog http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/ I have an editor, his comments are bolded and Italicized. I take no responsibility for them.
The City of Brass
by S.A. Chakraborty​
Mrs. Chakraborty was born in New Jersey on December 7th, 1984 to working-class Catholics. She converted to Islam in her teens and attended The American University in Cario. It was there that she first read the stories that would provide the seed for The City of Brass. Already studying to be a historian specializing in the Middle East, she researched the region's belief in Djinn and other spirits as well as the rituals used to summon them in folklore. Fast forward to 2008, and Mrs. Chakraborty is married and her husband is attending medical school. The economy has collapsed (Oh, the 2008 crash was so good compared to the one we’re in now. That was just a correction caused by the efficiency of the free market a collapse of a speculation bubble combined with predatory lending practices and what amounts to an economy wrecking gambling addiction. The current one is even worse, caused by an economy that does not have the resiliency to withstand a demand shock because efficient markets cut the fat that allows for that, combined with a consumptive economy where workers are paid barely enough to consume and sustain those supply chains without being able to save for disasters. If you’ve ever heard the term “crisis of capitalism” this is it. Internal contradictions coming home to roost.) and she is volunteering at her local mosque and found herself frustrated that young Muslim men were really only shown one way in entertainment and young Muslim women were rarely shown at all (I for one want to see more and better of both, so good for her!). So she sat down and wrote what started off as, in her own words, Historical fan fiction and turned into a full-blown fantasy novel. Setting fantasy in history is honestly a fine American tradition, Burroughs did it before World War I. Robert E Howard's Solomon Kane series was basically historical fan fiction with magic and fantasy added in. Even the poor mad Lovecraft embraced the use of history as a setting for his fantasies and Mrs. Chakraborty provides a splendid modern example of this tradition. Let's turn to the novel though, shall we?
The City of Brass was published in 2017 by Harper Voyager, a US imprint of the publishing company HarperCollins that handles science fiction and fantasy books. Harper Collins is a fully owned subsidiary of News Corps (Excuse me as I vomit, because that’s Rupert Murdock’s company.). A subsidiary just so everyone knows is a fancy way of saying it's a company owned by another company as opposed to being owned by an individual person. News Corp was founded by Rupert Murdoch in 2013 (See?), and I'll ask my editor to keep the rant to 2 lines so as to keep the review on topic (Request pre-empted {Thank you}). The City of Brass debuted to thunderous applause with a number of magazines and reviewers listing it as the best book of the year and it was a finalist in a number of awards, winning the booknest.eu award for best debut novel and only missing winning the Joseph W Campbell award by a single vote.
The novel is set in the 1800s, during the time of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt but swiftly leaves the real world. The main character of the novel is Nahri, an orphan who grew up on the streets of Cairo. She has used a combination of inborn healing gifts, knowledge she has stolen, begged for, scraped up, and outright theatrics to con wealthy Ottoman nobles and every now and again actually heal someone (Good for her. Always good to con the ruling class to survive. Beats stealing from your fellow poor people. Praxis! {Ehhh, the story makes it clear that Nahri and her fellows will gladly prey on each other but Nahri is smart enough to scam where the money is} Fair.). She'll also rob the homes of various marks, especially rude ones as a single piece of Turkish jewelry can feed her and pay her rent for months. However, with the invasion of the French army under Napoleon bringing in a wave of refugees, Nahri gets the idea to try a new sideline. Much like how Christians believed or still believe in demon possession and witchcraft, Muslims at the time believed (I imagine some still do believe but I have no knowledge of it) that spirits called Djinn would possess people and that complicated exorcisms were necessary to cast the offending spirit out or if the spirit was too powerful at least keep it quiet (There are Muslims who still believe this, yes.). Witnessing a number of these ceremonies Nahri is confident enough that she can fake one well enough to get a payout from wealthy families and maybe even achieve her dream of gathering enough money to bribe an academy into letting her study to learn enough to become a real doctor. However, things go off the rails when Nahri exercises her gifts with languages. You see, Nahri has a gift where hearing a language in conservation is enough for her to understand it and speak it as if she was a native. She also has a language that no one else can speak or learn, one that she assumed was the language of her unknown parents. So when she decides to incorporate her unknown language into the ceremony singing a summoning spell for a Djinn, she gets more than she bargains for and that's a vast understatement (Uh Oh. Elder speech. That’s not good. Or isn’t it?).
Nahri suddenly finds herself at the center of a conflict between Djinn and Ifrits, now these are not demons or angels but are spiritual beings. According to legend and as Nehri is told in the novel, the Djinn are made from fire and smoke, while humans were made from dust and the earth. Because of this, the Djinn have vast powers and it's hard for an average human to even see a Djinn let alone fight one. So the Djinn would at times make a sport out of tormenting humanity because there were no consequences for wrecking a human city if they felt like it. Unfortunately for them, divine consequences ensued. A human king and prophet named Suleiman (for westerners that would be Solomon) called up the Djinn and demanded that they submit to his judgment or be stripped of all their powers. The Ifrits refused and spent every moment of every day finding ways to gain new powers, even if that meant trafficking with hell. The Djinn submitted and were broken up into tribes and had their powers limited. They also had their nearly immortal life span limited to centuries. One Djinn woman not only submitted but aided Suleiman because she felt that the Djinn had gone too far in tormenting humanity and the punishment was just and Suleiman not only gave her more power than any other Djinn but set her in charge of everyone. That woman's family had immense powers of healing and harm, being able to set disease right or command the body to destroy itself. They were not only the political leaders of the tribe but the objects of intense religious devotion. They ruled from the great city of Daevabad until... We'll get to that. More immediately it turns out that Nahri is distantly related to that Djinn woman. In fact, she might be the last living relative of that family and the Ifrit hold a grudge... They're not the only ones and they might not even be the most dangerous enemies that Nahri has (Okay, this is all… pretty damn good as far as background goes, and I commend the author. Also: Holy crap poor Nahri.).
Because that family, her family, was overthrown by another tribe from the harsh desert sands of Arabia. While Nahri's ancestors were members of a fire worshiping religion that reminds me a bit of Zorasterism, the tribe that overthrew them had converted to Islam. Of course, no one claims it was a religious dispute, instead what's pointed to as the issue is the treatment of the shafit. The shafit are people who are born from Djinn/human relationships. They have enough magical power that they could run rampant over humanity if they chose to but while they can be dangerous to an unprepared full-blooded Djinn, they are usually no match for the magical powers a trained adult can bring to bear. Nahri's family viewed shafit's as an abomination and destroyed them whenever possible, which admittedly makes her very existence… Interesting. It was to stop this that the Muslim tribe rose up, or so they claim. However, in modern Daevabad the shafit is oppressed and exploited underclass with few if any legal rights beyond existing (Hypocrisy thy name is human…{You mean Djinn in this case}). They can be enslaved, they cannot carry weapons or learn too much about their inborn powers, they often have no legal recourse against mistreatment by purebloods. They can even have their children taken away at a moment's notice by any pureblooded Djinn who claims a relationship with them. Meanwhile, the original tribe that maintained Daevabad (called the Daevas) and served Nahri's power remains wealthy and strong and still in the city. However, anytime they displease the Royal family to much the guards step back and whip up the shafit to attack, murder, and rob them. The Daevas are also still fire-worshippers, which the shafit who are almost entirely Muslim deeply resent. Things aren't all that great for the Daevas though, as they are constantly under the threat of abuse from the Muslim majority and face laws discriminating against their religion. The current ruling family rather cold bloodily play the Djinn tribes against each other, the fire-worshippers against the Muslim and the Purebloods against the Shafit to maintain their rule.
This is becoming increasingly difficult as decadence and corruption in the royal government become harder and harder to cover up (Haaaaa! They’ve gone Full Hedonism Bot). Among the shafit, a movement known as the Tanzeem has sprung up. It preaches the idea of equality before the law for all Muslims and an end to oppression for the shafit and champions a large list of reforms that are both religious and political in nature. However, the Tanzeem is utterly and completely hostile to the Daevas and wants to pass laws restricting their religious freedom and increase the pressure on them to convert or be dispossessed (Historically Islam has this tendency, as do some sects of Christianity like the Levelers in the English Civil War. There is a massive social justice current within Shia Islam in particular, but its development is parallel with similar currents within Western thought, and religious people for faiths other than People of the Book didn’t feature as strongly. This isn’t to say that Muslims never value it’s just that it wasn’t a thing in the 1800s as much, which is also true of most Christian sects. There’s been a lot of cultural and political cross-pollination since then, and bluntly, as a gay atheist, I had more to worry about from my Baptist neighbors than my Muslim ones in graduate school.) Meanwhile, the Deavas remember who actually built this city and have organized themselves. For the most part, the Deavas have focused on getting in good with the royal family but the Tanzeem have their own noble and royal backers. Some Deavas however remember the abuses and mistreatment that the Muslim royals and other tribes inflicted on them and the humiliations they are continuously forced to swallow don't help. Into this simmering fire of piled resentments, overlapping hierarchies of power, wealth, magic, and oppression, is walking Nahri. She's almost completely ignorant of the complicated and violent history that everyone else is carrying around, barely able to control her powers, and has no idea who is actually her friend and who is actually her foe. What she does have going for her is the fact that she is ruthless, intelligent, and has instincts built from a lifetime of cheating and lying to the wealthy and powerful. Whether or not that will be enough is something you'll have to find out.
The City of Brass is a story about pressure. Of a society under the pressure of religious, ethnic, and political conflicts (How very… Ottoman.). Of families and individuals under the pressure of conflicting loyalties and sympathies. Of Nahri under the pressure to learn how to use her powers and to learn about the dangers, she is surrounded by and maybe even to learn about her heritage, which means learning about some really dark chapters and awful actions. Pressure isn't always a bad thing, the pressure to excel is what drives many of us to learn and master our chosen fields. Pressure can lead to reform and positive change. In fact, without some sort of pressure, it's almost impossible to compel a change in government or society. That said pressure can also lead to atrocity, brutality, and oppression, and let's be honest dear reader there isn't a single one of us on Earth who doesn't have a story about a terrible decision or action taken under pressure that we would have otherwise avoided (He’s right on all of this. You know that.). Now some of you may be wondering why I've refused to discuss the male characters in the story and my answer is both for reasons of space and to make sure we avoid as many spoilers as possible. Trust me, you'll thank me when you read the book. Mrs. Chakraborty creates a richly colored setting with intense feelings that make the history and the resulting hatreds and grudges seem incredibly real. That setting is in turn populated by characters who are also very real and three dimensional, with grand virtues and fatal flaws that have consequences for their entire society. While this is the first book in a trilogy, Mrs. Chakraborty tells a complete story in this book avoiding the trap that many other authors fall into leaving the story unfinished for the next book. The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty gets an A from me and I look forward to reading the rest of the series.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Livid nightlife, American Rockstars sold-out converts, Las-Vegas style gambling scene, Women tasting sweet freedom, Twelver Shia Muslims having their own Seminaries, NEOM city building up and Saudi ARAMCO increasing production... Many things are going on in Saudi society, though for some odd reasons they have still been getting bad press. The Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs' suggestion to the King for the nation to take on a massive Public Relations campaign could surely bolster the image of the kingdom greatly and save it from isolation. Permission was granted, and so did he receive the budget to perform the necessary.
The Eastern Provinces Deserts and Coast
With the Twelver Shias having their own Islamic Seminary, the Saudi government not only subdued 15-20% of their population but also proven to the world that in the Kingdom all creeds in Islam are equal and there is no difference between a Sunni and a Shia. In fact, it is widely known that Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman's mother, is also a Twelver Shia, as she is from the Al-Sultan clan of the Al-Ajmi tribe. King Salman also has issued by Royal Decree that his wife, Queen Fahdah Bint Falah al-Sultan Al-Ajmi be appointed as Minister of Tolerance, and starting up this ministry immediately. She will also be in communication with the UAE's Minister of tolerance so that they can emulate each other.
Now Shia Muslims are not the only ones that will benefit here. Saudi Arabia also has plans to build the first Hindu temple in the Kingdom in the city of Al Hofuf. Indian conglomerate Shapoorji has been approached to kick off construction and will be fully funded by the Ministry of Tolerance.
Meanwhile, in the oilfields, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia slowly increased production, and start to build more storage tanks. Nearby the Kuwaiti & UAE borders, OXY-Saudi in collaboration with ARAMCO have been conducting some exploration activities, and millions of dollars have been spent on new testing wells to discover new oil and gas fields in the region.
The Road between Riyadh (KSA) to Ibri (OMN) has now been completed, and now the Saudi minister of Transport has expressed interest to American/Saudi JVs to start construction of an HSR line linking Riyadh & Dammam to Abu Dhabi & Dubai.
The Central Nejd Plateau
In Riyadh, the royal house of Saud and the oligarchy became victims of purges, with prominent members arrested on charges of corruption. This time there was no Ritz Carlton hotel. This time was serious. All the accused have been given multiple chances to correct themselves, and so have ultimately dug their own graves here. The police are everywhere and have ultimately been in coordination with the intelligence agencies to crack down on the undesirables.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman also has announced that a new law decriminalizing drugs such as Marijuana and Cocaine will take place next month, and there will be no more death penalty for smugglers. All previous cases will be dealt on an ad-hoc basis, and former convicts for the petty crimes will be given a new chance to wipe off their criminal records in order for them to be able to work legally.
With high youth unemployment, Saudi Arabia rolls out policies for introducing new jobs, besides the military ones, but also state-sponsored on-the-job training for technical, administrative, and managerial roles. The government will incentivize contractors who hire a minimum number of Saudi Citizens and grant them preference in the tender bidding process. This move was seen as welcome by the general population, as more than 50% of the Saudi citizens are under the age of 25 with a high number of jobseekers.
The Wahabi Religious authorities also have had their powers stripped away, with them playing ultimately no role in the entire kingdom expect in the two holy cities of Makkah and Madinah. They will be limited only there and will be monitored heavily by the Ministry of Tolerance so as to abide by the policies of the Queen. Riyadh will also see the construction of Saudi Arabia's first church, with representatives of Catholocism, Protestantism, Mormonism, Orthodoxy, Coptic, Syriac, Nestorianism, and Anglican churches all playing an active role to serve its adherents there.
The Western Hijaz-Asir Mountain Range and coast
This area is much more populated than the rest of Saudi Arabia. In NEOM city, the bridge connecting Saudi Arabia to Egypt has been completed, and now works are underway to start the expansion for an HSR railway line there. The bridge will not interfere with Jordan/Israeli access into the gulf of Aqaba, nor will it interfere in the Shipping lanes of the Red Sea passing through the Suez Canal. Some damage to Coral reefs have been done, and so the Saudi Ministry of Fisheries has started construction of Artificial reefs in order to preserve the marine life and ecosystem there.
Madinah Al Munawwara has been on the news very much, and a police presence was very high to prevent any terrorist attacks in this holy city. During the mid-April celebration of the Jewish holiday Pass-over, a whole week of interfaith events took place in the Prophet's city, where there was a communal Iftar held, Yoga sessions, joint-Prayers, and spiritual dialogues. Some of the topics discussed was: the commonalities between all religions, striving for the common good, encouraging tolerance, the Creation of Man, the secrets of Buddha, the wisdom of Moses, the teachings of Jesus, and the greatness of Mohammed. Members of all faiths and creeds participated. We could see the Jew and the Muslim feasting together, the Hindu and the Christian meditating together, and even Sunni-Shia scholars be civil with each other here. Even the Sufi was seen to be getting along with the Salafi here. Following the way of our Prophet Mohammed, the Christians and Jews were able to perform their own prayers in the Holy Mosque in Medina, which hasn't been done since 1400 years ago. The Saudi King also had met with Islamic religious leaders such as the Aga Khan, Sufi Masters, Sharifs & Sayyids, and Muftis representing their nations such as Zimbabwe's Ismail Menk. He also had the time to meet with other religious leaders such as the Catholic Pope, Dalai Lama, Jewish Rabbis, etc..
In Makkah Al Mukarramah, huge expansion projects to increase the capacity of Hajj & Umrah pilgrims are underway. Very Important delegates such as the Catholic Pope and the Dalai Lama and their entourage also had the opportunity to travel there and visit the Ka'abah, the black cube, to which all Muslims face for direction in their prayers, and drink water from the Zamzam well. This was a highly publicized event and extra security measures were taken to avoid any disasters. Great Photo-op showing Islamic tolerance. Truly magnificent event.
Meanwhile, down south by the border of Yemen, the war was ongoing, and so had a lot of movement. Fishermen, Farmers, and Shepherds all made money here since they had contracts with the government to supply food products. War was good for business, as long as you are on the winning side here.