Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Kristi Noem, look at rows of bunk beds behind chain link fence in a detention center.

Don’t Call it ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’ Call it a Concentration Camp.

This facility’s purpose fits the classic model, and its existence points to serious dangers ahead for the country.
A Los Angelas police officer walks away from a police cruiser with a damaged windshield.

"Corporate America’s Security Guards In-Blue": State Violence and Latinx Protest in Los Angeles

Los Angeles has a history of Latinx protest; one that is often marred by police violence.
Demonstrators against ICE in Pasadena, California.

Emma Tenayuca Championed Class Struggle and Migrant Rights

Labor activist Emma Tenayuca led Mexican American women in San Antonio’s legendary pecan shellers’ strike. Today, we can learn from her example.
Scaffolding behind the statue of the rule of law outside the Supreme Court building.

Trump Is Wrong About Birthright Citizenship. History Proves It.

Lawmakers knew the Fourteenth Amendment would apply to the children of immigrants.
Leonard Peltier adjusts the black bandana around his head.

Leonard Peltier’s Story Isn’t Over Yet

The Native activist spent nearly fifty years in prison for the killing of two F.B.I. agents. In January, Joe Biden commuted his sentence, and he went home.
Supreme Court viewed through a window; Supreme Court justices' hands on their laps.

The Archaic Sex-Discrimination Case the Supreme Court Is Reviving

In Skrmetti, the Court turned to a decades-old decision once thought to be consigned to history.
US National Guard troops block off Beale Street as Civil Rights marchers wearing placards reading, "I AM A MAN"

The Classical Liberal Foundation of Civil Rights

The progress we have seen toward civil rights for all Americans is inseparable from the history of classical liberalism.
Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic

The Perils of ‘Design Thinking’

How did the concept become the solution to society’s most deeply entrenched problems?
Illustration of armed and hooded Ku Klux Klan members.

Masked Terror

ICE officers are wearing masks to conceal their identities. The Ku Klux Klan also employed masks to avoid prosecution for its acts of racial violence.
William Sentner address a crowd of union workers at a small arms plant

The Radical Midwest of Bill Sentner

St Louis organizer Bill Sentner led some of the most successful labor battles in Midwestern history by uniting workers across race and gender lines.
A pride flag framing the US Capitol building.
partner

The Lavender Scare and the History of LGBTQ Exclusion

The rollback of LGBTQ rights echoes a deeply consequential chapter of American history: the Lavender Scare.
Martin Luther King Jr stands behind a podium.

5 Lessons From the Real Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

This Juneteenth we need to discard the caricatures of King that we so often see and learn from what he actually did and believed.
Statue of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln Wasn't Born an Abolitionist, He Became One

We live in polarized times when freedom is threatened but this Juneteenth we should remind ourselves that we have overcome far worse.
A hand holds a US flag and a pride flag in front of the Supreme Court building in a crowd celebrating the Obergefell v. Hodges decision.
partner

How the Supreme Court Ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges Legalized Same-Sex Marriage

When Jim Obergefell and his partner John Arthur decided to marry after more than 20 years together, their home state refused to recognize same-sex marriages.
Protestors confronting Army military police.

When the Military Comes to American Soil

Domestic deployments have generally been quite restrained. Can they still be?

Eco-Terrorists Aren't What They Used to Be

Fifty years on, "The Monkey Wrench Gang" remains a problematic text for environmental activists, who are inclined to endorse its violent tendencies.
A row of California National Guardsmen stand atop a top step in riot gear.

Trump’s Deportation Frenzy Echoes the Fugitive Slave Hunts of the 1850s

Trump's crackdown on immigrants bears alarming parallels to the fugitive slave obsessions of the pre-Civil War South.

The Revolutionary Idea That Remade the New World

Birthright citizenship is distinctly American—but not in the way Trump thinks.
Thomas Jefferson
partner

Thomas Jefferson: A Vote for Cutting Off Your Nose

To reduce Virginia’s use of the death penalty, Thomas Jefferson proposed using permanent disfigurement as a punishment for rape, polygamy, and sodomy.
partner

Not Just the Dog-Eared Pages

Considering a novel as a whole, rather than as the sum of its parts, was an approach favored by mid-20th-century literary critics. It was also useful for fighting book bans.
Children jump rope in the dirt yard of a Catholic school while their peers watch.

Pierce at 100

A century ago, the Court recognized the essential right of parents to direct the education of their children.
Scroll and quill pen

Brutality and Opacity

Birthright citizenship under attack.
William E. Humphrey and Franklin D. Roosevelt with national symbols.

The Supreme Court Undercuts Another Check on Executive Power

To defend the Trump Administration, the Court ignored long-standing precedent barring Presidents from firing independent-agency heads at will.
Attica after state police stormed the prison, 1971.

How Should We Remember Attica?

Orisanmi Burton’s "Tip of the Spear" uncovers the obscured and radical demands of the inmates who staged the 1971 prison uprising—a world without prisons.
Arrows circling the word "Invasion"

The “Invasion” Invention: The Far Right’s Long Legal Battle to Make Immigrants the Enemy

Trump allies push “invasion” claims to justify suspending habeas corpus, a far-right legal effort years in the making.
A student protest at Gallaudet University.

A Striking Moment in American Activism

A new documentary revisits a pivotal week at Gallaudet University in 1988.
A still from the Sound of Fury of two men fighting.

Dangerous Work

Cy Endfield, film noir, and the blacklist.
Malcolm X

What Made Malcolm X Dangerous

He challenged the violence of US power, abroad and at home. His radical internationalism, from Congo to Palestine, speaks to our moment.
A racially diverse group of children saying the Pledge of Allegiance while one holds an American flag.

Who Gets to Be an American?

Since the earliest days of the Republic, American citizenship has been contested, subject to the anti-democratic impulses of racism, suspicion, and paranoia.
Broadside about the Fugitive Slave law.
partner

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850: Annotated

The Fugitive Slave Act erased the most basic of constitutional rights for enslaved people and incentivized US Commissioners to support kidnappers.