Power

Is this America?

In the 20th century, American Communists were seen as an enemy within. In reality, they were ordinary people with complex lives that deserve to be chronicled.

And national security became everything.

Kamala Harris is the heir to a political lineage that dates back to a chain-smoking, hard-drinking mastermind elected to Congress from San Francisco in 1964.

Vito Marcantonio fought racial, social, and economic injustices, promoting cross-cultural solidarity and progressive ideals amid McCarthyism and segregation.

What the scholarship on biraciality tells us about politics now.

A college group pioneered the dirty tricks that led to Watergate. Fifty years later, the tactics still poison politics.

Maurice Isserman’s history of American communism documents both its achievements and its fatal obeisance to Soviet doctrines.

Vice presidential nominees weren't tasked with flinging mud until the last 40 years.

It is hard not to figure the 1968 election as inaugurating the cultural and political polarisation of the American electorate so evident today.

Heather Cox Richardson argues that there are two Americas: one interested in equality, the other in hierarchy. But it's not that simple.

The Democratic Party, and the US political system as a whole, is a very strange beast.

When Nixon practiced law, he declined divorce cases because he disliked frank sexual talk from women. Trump asked Playboy to run a “Girls of Trump” feature.

Douglass elaborated a political theory attuned to the differential character of law as it applied to slaves and other outlaws.

Americans are seized by conspiracy theories, and as a result, democracy is in peril—so conventional wisdom holds.

Plus: One historian’s about-face on the Communist record.

How Ayabe-way-we-tung guided his tribe in the midst of colonization.

“The most underrated president” was a model of successful governance in a world in flux.

The signs that precede the crumbling of American political parties and the creation of new ones.

Far from a novel form of populism, J. D. Vance’s appeals are indistinguishable from the economic vision of the 1970s John Birch Society.

John Ganz offers a whirlwind tour of the cranks, conservatives, and con artists who helped remake the American right at the turn of the 21st century.

Why few Native Americans are celebrating the centennial of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.

The Roberts Court has made the current crisis of American democracy perpetual.

Trump’s language about immigrants “poisoning” the U.S. repeats past rhetoric that led to civilian detention camps, with horrific, tragic results.

Biden’s withdrawal won’t solve all of Democrats’ problems — but it gives them a chance.

It’s difficult to see how these profound antipathies and fears will dissipate soon through any normal political processes.

Until the late 1960s, the Democratic Party could have simply anointed a replacement for President Biden. Now it's not so easy.

James Shapiro's book "The Playbook" is a timely reminder both of the power of theater and of the vehement antipathy it can generate.

Joe Biden is hardly the first president who has decided not to seek a second term—but the circumstances this time are unique.

A culture of reverence for the U.S. Constitution shields the founding document from criticism, despite its many shortcomings.