Barack Obama and Chinese president Xi Jinxing looking away from each other.

The Bipartisan Origins of the New Cold War

Starting with Obama, American presidents embraced the idea of arresting China’s rise, opening the door to Trump’s trade wars and hawkishness.
Hubert Humphrey.

Votes for Humphrey [Biden]

On (not) voting.

Divestment and the American Political Tradition

From Dow to now.

A Known and Unknown War

Twenty years later, I am living through the making of the Iraq War as history.
Image from book cover of "Petroleum and Progress in Iran."

There Will Be War

U.S.-Iranian relations, the interrelationship between Iranian development and the global oil market, and the future of economic warfare.
J. Edgar Hoover (center) with President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, February 23, 1961.

J. Edgar Hoover Tried to Destroy the Left — and Liberals Enabled Him

The author of a new biography explains how liberals played an important role in enabling Hoover’s antidemocratic crusade.
Francis Fukuyama

Last Man Standing

Francis Fukuyama pines for that old-time liberalism.
The Philippine Scouts, a unit of the American army blamed for mass killings and torture, stand in formation circa 1905.

How the Philippines Were Crucial to the Making of American Empire

The US has long had a brutal, domineering relationship with the Philippines. And crucially, it’s depended on the labor of colonized Filipinos themselves.

Police Reform Doesn’t Work

A century of failed liberal attempts at policing reform in Minneapolis suggests that none of the city’s current proposals will prevent another George Floyd.
Henry Wallace.

The Past and Future of the Left in the Democratic Party

Centrist Democrats who blamed the left for election losses would do well to remember the people who have fought for and shaped the party’s history.
Soldiers in a trench during the First World War.

What We Should Remember on Armistice Day

World War I was a catastrophic, barbaric conflict that left tens of millions of people dead and set the stage for anti-democratic rollbacks for years to come.

The Long, Tortured History of the Job Guarantee

How liberals, over decades, worked to undermine a proposal that has long enjoyed public support.