A Day With Chickens JOYCE VANCE JUL 6 The girls all wanted to strike a pose today, so I decided I wouldn’t fight it and that I’d share chicken pictures tonight instead of what I’d planned to write about. For those of you who want to do a little advance reading, I’ve been studying the Education Chapter in Project 2025, which starts on page 319 here. Ruth, who has been molting, is finally presentable again. Pumpkin has been broody all spring and into summer, she would sit on any eggs she could manage to get into her nesting box until I took them away. I’m glad she’s finally back out and enjoying herself. Toot is super proud of herself now that she’s a reliable layer of the most beautiful blue eggs. I was nicely rewarded for spending a lot of time cleaning and sprucing up this morning (including one of Toot’s lovely blue eggs). Bob put them to good use right away. That was my day. I’ll be back tomorrow night with “The Week Ahead.” I know it’s been a tough stretch, but we’re going to find inspiration for what’s ahead. Until then, our friend Steven Beschloss at the America, America Substack has a great piece today, asking when Trump will sit for a real interview. And, Mary Trump got straight to the point, as only she can: Wherever you stand on the debate over whether Biden should be the Democratic Party’s nominee (I’m still firmly behind the Biden/Harris ticket), one thing we can all agree on is that the country cannot withstand another four years of Donald Trump in office. Trump benefits from this dispute just like he does from the delays in sentencing him in the Manhattan case and in moving forward with the prosecutions in Washington, D.C. and Florida. We may not control that, but there is still important work we can do. It’s imperative that we continue to focus on the fact that democracy is on the ballot in November, and that educating and motivating as many voters as possible is the path forward. There are a lot of challenges—voter suppression, the Supreme Court—but we did this in 2020 and we can do it again, as long as we don’t let anyone convince us we can’t before we get there. We’re in this together, Joyce