Meet Heather Cox Richardson, Radical Leftie Historian Quietly Influencing Millions

President Donald Trump is a dictator. Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a far-right die-hard. The Supreme Court is happily ushering in an authoritarian takeover.

If you get your news from Heather Cox Richardson, you might be nodding along in agreement. Nevermind the truth, which has been no impediment to the growth of Richardson’s Substack, “Letters from an American.”

At over 2.7 million subscribers, many of them paying, Cox’s remains one of the most successful authors on the platform. Cox’s newsletter offers three subscription options: free, $5 dollars a month, $50 a year. 

heather cox richardson has 2,600,000 subscribers pic.twitter.com/BBHUXCMyGk

— Mike Solana (@micsolana) September 17, 2025

“The $5 monthly subscriptions to participate in her comments section are on track to bring in more than a million dollars a year,” The New York Times (NYT) estimated in December 2020. 

Cox is a professor of history at Boston College. Her writing is calm, authoritative. She brings a “historian’s confident context to the day’s mundane politics,” in the words of a glowing NYT profile. 

She’s our Walter Cronkite, a voice of plainspoken wisdom transcending bipartisan squabbling.

That facade shatters when you read even one of her newsletters. 

Richardson is a Democrat. Plain and simple. 

Richardson wagged her finger at the media for supposedly getting “in on the game” of blaming the left for Charlie Kirk’s murder. She offers the example of the Wall Street Journal’s report that “[a]mmunition engraved with transgender and antifascist ideology was found inside the rifle authorities believe was used in Kirk’s shooting.” (RELATED: Prosecutors Reveal Chilling Text Messages Between Alleged Kirk Assassin And His Trans Lover)

Notice that the passage quoted by Richardson does not attribute Kirk’s murder to “the left.” It does not even assert that 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, the man accused of assassinating Kirk, was a leftist. It merely relates facts that Richardson finds distasteful. 

Just found out who Heather Cox Richardson was today. No kidding. Had heard her name around but I have a filter concerning ostentatious middle-name users so I never bothered to find out more. I feel like a whole second lifetime of comic material is available to me now.

— Walter Kirn (@walterkirn) October 15, 2025

Richardson clings to different facts: “Robinson’s parents are registered Republicans; he was not affiliated with a political party and was an inactive voter. Over the past years, Robinson’s mother posted a number of pictures of him and his brothers posing with guns. Robinson had recently had a conversation with a family member about why they didn’t like Kirk’s viewpoints.”

Then, in the same measured tone, she swerves into wild speculation.

“Robinson appears to have admired the ‘Groypers,’ led by Nick Fuentes, who complain that more mainstream organizations like Kirk’s Turning Point USA are not ‘pro-white’ enough and have publicly harassed Kirk in the past.”

She accuses Trump of having “lost interest in Kirk,” citing those Trump remarks Jimmy Kimmel mocked on his Sept. 16 broadcast.

Richardson’s top post regards the Uvalde massacre. It was published May 31, 2022.

In it, she rages against the “modern-day Republican Party,” which has “managed repeatedly to stop the commonsense gun regulations that the vast majority of us want, even when their stubbornness means our children die at school.” She describes the “Republican manipulation of our political system,” and ponders about the sentiments of Americans “concerned that Republicans have gamed the system.” 

Historians arrange historical evidence in the shape of a story. Richardson tells a simple, and unfortunately compelling, one. Democracy is good. Republicans are evil. Democrats are sometimes hapless, but well intentioned, and our only hope. 

“This is the story of a dictator on the rise,” Richardson wrote in a Facebook post on Sept. 15, 2019, “taking control of formerly independent branches of government, and using the power of his office to amass power.” (RELATED: Anarchist Group Calls For BLM-Style ‘Revolt’ At Anti-Trump ‘No Kings’ Rallies)

Writing for left-wing magazine Current Affairs, Nathan J. Robinson conceded he shares Richardson’s “conclusion that the contemporary Republican Party is the enemy of democracy.” He doesn’t mind the suggestion in Richardson’s writing that “the Republican Party are bigots, thugs, and would-be dictators.”

But, Nathan Robinson writes, “I think Richardson is not nearly critical enough of the Democratic Party, which appears in her story almost entirely innocent and wholly devoted to the well-being of the American people.” 

One of the unintentionally comic things about Heather Cox Richardson is her habit of randomly invoking her authority as a historical for whatever she says. https://t.co/iwk1N8pWfH pic.twitter.com/lX8YZKLt8O

— Josiah Neeley 🇺🇸 (@jneeley78) September 20, 2025

He cites Richardson’s characterization of former President Joe Biden: “When Americans elected Democratic president Joe Biden in 2020, he made it clear that he intended to defend American democracy from rising authoritarianism. Throughout his campaign, he focused on bringing people in the center-right and center-left together, just as scholars of authoritarianism have called for … Biden’s domestic program expanded liberalism to meet the civil rights demands Carter had identified, just as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR, and LBJ had each expanded liberalism to meet the challenges of westward expansion, industrialization, globalization, and anti-colonialism … Biden knew that defending democracy at home meant strengthening it internationally.” 

Richardson grounds her DNC-style talking points in a DNC-style history of the United States.

Right-wing journal Claremont Review of Books offers an “abridged version” of Richardson’s telling of the 20th century: “John F. Kennedy was murdered in ‘nut country’ (i.e., right-wing Dallas; never mind that Oswald was a Commie), Nixon hatched his racist ‘southern strategy’ and polarized our politics for political gain, Reagan launched his presidential campaign three miles from where three civil rights workers had been murdered to signify his white supremacist bona fides, the end of the Fairness Doctrine for broadcast networks allowed the dangerous rise of Rush Limbaugh, and Republicans after the Cold War made our elections ‘less free and fair’ and began cozying up to the Russians.” (RELATED: CIA Caught Lying About Lee Harvey Oswald Ties)

Richardson finds a receptive audience in women. Mostly older women.

“What I am doing is speaking to women who have not necessarily been paying attention to politics, older people who had not been engaged,” Richardson told the NYT. “I’m an older woman and I’m speaking to other women about being empowered.”

Read: People who still have Harris-Walz signs on their lawn.

Empowerment is supposed to be understood as a good in and of itself. Richardson wields her power to conjure historical fantasies for an audience of willing dupes.

Follow Natalie Sandoval on X: @NatSandovalDC