Excerpts

Although the West has long tolerated forced expulsions when convenient, its postwar framework at least nominally rejected them. Now the US is endorsing it.

Newly declassified documents reveal how Israel operated under the noses of U.S. inspectors.

Introducing “How the System Works,” a series on the hidden mechanisms that support modern life.

The civil rights leader’s lone poem, written from prison, reveals his love of language — and his quest for truth.

Black Marxist thought emphasizes the centrality of capitalism to racial oppression and the destructiveness of that oppression for all workers.

In the 19th century, John Conness defended the 14th Amendment and shut down proto-Trumpians.

Which one was Abraham Lincoln?

A Black transgender woman’s testimony helped ratify the 14th Amendment. Then conservatives began attacking her identity.

How the country’s post-apartheid politics may inform the world view of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

America’s early leaders were worried not only about demagogues like Donald Trump, but about the rise of an antidemocratic, wealthy elite that goads such men on.

The Puritan origins of modern ideas about migration.

He authored the Constitution to forestall the rise of a despotic president. We’ll soon see if those safeguards suffice.

For decades, Washington has denied, downplayed and rationalized atrocities by its allies.

José ‘Cha Cha’ Jiménez and the Young Lords laid the groundwork for radical racial justice movements.

Journalists at Good Housekeeping, Redbook, and other women’s magazines were informing readers how to recognize, protect against, and talk about cancer.

For all of its faults and weaknesses, no serious competitor has emerged to capture people’s imagination or seriously challenge it.

Max Gordon, Prohibition, and the transformative creation of the Village Vanguard.

Kamala Harris and the lineage of the female cop.

Some of today's most influential political figures also won power through their willingness to say things that capture media attention.

In the aftermath of the American Revolution, southern slaveholders were thinking about what a prison should look like for a society that was economically and socially dependent on slavery.

For most of history, the Moon was regarded as a mysterious and powerful object. Then scientists made it into a destination.

Musk and Trump are capitalizing on decades of confusion and broken promises to lay waste to a crucial agency.

The legacy of Nixon's strategic ambiguity of acknowledging China's claim to Taiwan without fully committing.

The late conservative thinker, who died 20 years ago Saturday, has transcended the pariah status imposed on him during his life.

Elon Musk and other tech moguls with roots in apartheid-era South Africa have been shaped by the history of right-wing white nationalism.

Washington’s policy-makers showed themselves more wicked and feckless than their Vietnam- and Iraq-era predecessors.

In 1984, only 18 American states denied that wives were the sexual property of their husbands.

Why black biography matters.

The pages of 1950s lifestyle magazines offer a glimpse of a time when childhood vaccines were anything but controversial.

“Bloody Sam” was born one hundred years ago this month.

Past presidents showed that removing millions of illegal aliens is achievable.

A new dual biography turns the lens on the towering architects of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

In the summer of 1842, young Abraham Lincoln’s razor-sharp wit almost got him into a whole heap of trouble.

Attempts to add Canada to the U.S. have gone poorly since the 1770s. Trump's rhetoric threatens a repeat.

Universal birthright citizenship was never the original intent.

The harrowing and heroic life of Marianne Faithfull, cheater of a thousand deaths and music history’s true avenging angel.

That’s not how separation of powers works under the U.S. Constitution.

Presidents can't shutter an agency Congress created by statute. Only Congress has this power.

Why do Americans idealize people who found businesses?

How a clerk on Ellis Island at the dawn of the 20th century documented discrimination through photography, and what that tells us about today’s malaise.

When the National Park Service removed trans people from the webpages of the Stonewall National Monument, it echoed one of the darkest chapters of the queer past.

The president is right to release the Kennedy files.

In a new book, Jeffrey Toobin makes a convincing case that Ford’s pardon of President Nixon set the stage for unchecked presidential power.

There are better models for President Trump than William McKinley. 

For centuries, theorists of liberal governance have worried about how emergencies can unfetter executive power. Trump has given those fears new urgency.

Levity and play — eerily combined with anxiety, terror, and deadly violence — shaped the identity and image of Early Republic militias.

For a century, Americans have embraced a punitive approach to addiction—one that has undermined treatment efforts.

“The conflicts of popular factions are the chief, if not the only inlets, of usurpation and Tyranny,” the first president wrote.

Jon Savage’s “The Secret Public” traces the influence of queer artists on a hostile culture.

An investigation of the US’s mass internment of Japanese Americans.