Interview Highlights

On how Texas history often fails to address slavery

It still surprises me that slavery went unexamined for so long. But then you have to understand: The Texas revolt, for 150 years, was largely ignored by academics, in part because it was considered déclassé, it was considered provincial, and because the state government of Texas, much as they're doing now, has for 120, 130 years, made very clear to the University of Texas faculty and to the faculty of other state-funded universities that it only wants one type of Texas history taught ... and that if you get outside those boundaries, you're going to hear about it from the Legislature.

On how Mexican Americans were largely written out of Texas history

The Tejanos, who were the Texians' key allies and a number of which fought and died at the Alamo, were entirely written out of generations of Texas history [as it was] written by Anglo writers. This was mirrored very much in the kind of ethnic cleansing that went on after the revolution in which hundreds of Tejanos were pushed out of San Antonio, in Victoria and existing towns, their lands taken, laws passed against their ability to marry white women and hold public office.

On the myth that the Alamo defenders fought to the death

[Mexican Gen. Antonio López de] Santa Anna is coming north with 6,000 troops. [The Alamo defenders have] maybe 200 guys at essentially an indefensible open-air Spanish mission. There has always been this great mystery of why on earth [Lt. Col. William] Travis and [James] Bowie stay, and the best argument there is probably because they believe reinforcements would be forthcoming. Every other day they send off these plaintive, dramatic letters asking for reinforcement that, by and large, never came.

But the truly perplexing thing is that in the two weeks leading up to the arrival of Santa Anna's forces in San Antonio, Travis and Bowie are getting almost daily warnings of the progress. They know they're coming and yet still they stay there. It makes absolutely no sense of why they stayed there, except for the fact that these are men who, by and large, have never been in war. You get a sense that Travis never really believes something bad can happen to him. I mean, the idea that Mexican soldiers would show up and kill them all just seems like a notion that he never really accepted, that somehow something would happen to spirit them all the way to safety. And of course, it doesn't happen. And of course, this leads to one of the great myths, which is the bravery of the Alamo defenders, how they fought to their death and everything. And when you look at the facts, they never made a conscious decision to fight to the death. There was no line in the sand drawn. ...

What we now know is because Mexican accounts — accounts from Mexican officers and soldiers — a number of them, a dozen of them have come to light over the last 50 years, show that between a third and a half [of] the Texas defenders actually broke and ran. They ran out into the open where they were unceremoniously run down and killed by Mexican cavalry. Now, neither we nor the academic authors who first found this say that this means anybody was a coward. It was just that the place was overrun. It wasn't like every man fought to his death in place, as generations of historians have taught us.

On how the 1960 John Wayne movie The Alamo perpetuated these myths

[Wayne] made the movie basically because he wholeheartedly believed that America was falling apart, that it was going to the dogs and that somebody needs to stand up for what are today called "patriotic values," "family values," "American values." And it's also pretty clear ... [Wayne] was ardently pro-Nixon in the 1960 presidential campaign and ardently anti-Kennedy and in his mind, believed that this type of huge shout-out of American patriot values could somehow defeat John F. Kennedy.

The movie, most reviewers would tell you, is a mess. It perpetuates every hoary Alamo myth. And yet it spoke to a certain cross section of American and international viewers. It was really the thing that more than anything, caused the Alamo to become the international icon that it's become.

The evidence we obtained did not support a finding that the USPP cleared the park to allow the President to survey the damage and walk to St. John’s Church. Instead, the evidence we reviewed showed that the USPP cleared the park to allow [a Secret Service] contractor to safely install the antiscale fencing in response to destruction of property and injury to officers occurring on May 30 and 31. Further, the evidence showed that the USPP did not know about the President’s potential movement until mid- to late afternoon on June 1—hours after it had begun developing its operational plan and the fencing contractor had arrived in the park.

Former Anchorage GOP Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux faces four new felony counts of voter misconduct, state prosecutors announced Thursday. LeDoux’s former legislative aide, Lisa Simpson, also faces two new felony charges, which could increase the pressure on her to cooperate with authorities in their efforts to convict her former boss.

The charges against LeDoux came after state elections officials notified the Alaska State Troopers of what they described as irregularities with absentee ballot applications during her 2018 re-election campaign. The FBI also participated in the investigation.

Simpson’s son Caden is also being charged with voter misconduct. He’s represented by a public defender, according to a state courts database.

Matt said Anderson fondled him and did “an anal probe” when he visited the doctor for a sports physical prior to joining the pee wee football team. According to Matt, when he shared those details with Bo, the coach told him he didn’t want to hear about it and then got physically violent with both Matt and his mother.

“That was the first time he closed-fist punched me,” Matt told ESPN. “It knocked me all the way across the kitchen.”

ESPN