Power

Nixon’s 1973 firing of a Watergate prosecutor raised questions about executive power, accountability and the limits of the law.

He has produced a crisis much like the one the colonists faced two and a half centuries ago. Now it’s our responsibility to uphold the Founders’ legacy.

Charles Sumner's example reminds us that "with enough courage and drive, can alter the trajectory of American racial history."

The often-overlooked institutions of the federal government truly do matter and so do the individuals who lead those institutions and give them direction.

The history of gerrymandering suggests that the current redistricting race for short-term partisan gain indicates a period of political instability on the way.

How an astrologer's direction steered presidential travel, public appearances, and meetings.

Historians have long grappled with “the American Paradox” of Revolutionary leaders who fought for their own liberty while denying it to enslaved Black people.

The conservative movement "assumed it had intellectual ownership over the presidency," but an NEH appointment fight reveals the Reagan administration disagreed.

The agency once projected America’s loftiest ideals. Then it ceded its ambitions to Elon Musk.

Ideological entrepreneur, architect of ruin.

JFK's presidential win in 1960 offers a guide for how Democrats can rebound in 2025.

George Lunn, socialist mayor of Schenectady, New York rose to power in 1911 by making a difference in people's lives.

Can Zohran Mamdani reshape New York—and national—politics like Mayor Fiorello La Guardia once did?

Both Trump and Cleveland employed the rhetoric of worthiness and efficiency, anti-fraud and anti-corruption, as justifications for their austerity measures.

Robert La Follette saw politics as a never-ending struggle for democracy and fairness and preached perseverance.

Where they come from, how they've evolved, and how they could change.

He didn’t give the tech right new ideas—not really. What he gave them was permission.

"The Cycles of American History" foresaw American voter dealignment, and an age of voters prioritizing personality over party—but it didn’t anticipate Trump.

He believes in Federalist 70’s “Energy in the Executive.”

During the Reagan revolution, Democrats settled on a new way to win—and it’s destroying them now.

Truths self-evident no more.

Vague phrasing enfranchised women who met specific property requirements. A 1790 law explicitly allowed female suffrage, but this privilege was revoked in 1807.

Don't let its universalist language fool you.

In 1880s Texas, farmers and factory workers discovered they had the same enemy: corporate capitalists.

Revisiting history shows that violence and constitutional disputes are nothing new in US politics.

They rejected kings and were sincerely concerned about the possibility of a dictatorship. But we need to move past founder-worship and focus on justice.

It’s uncanny.

It depends on how you read the Declaration’s “self-evident” truths.

The legacy of right-wing ideologies in California.

Why does the power to launch nuclear weapons rest with a single American?