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White settlers traveling west in Conestoga wagons.

America as Filibuster Society

American expansionism goes beyond territory.
by Nick Burns via American Affairs on August 20, 2024
Texas governor Greg Abbott at press conference
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Texas Is Trying to Upend Who Controls Immigration Policy

The federal government has long controlled immigration law—and for very good reason.
by Kevin Kenny via Made By History on April 5, 2024
"Temple of Liberty" immigration policy cartoon

How the Federal Government Came to Control Immigration Policy and Why it Matters

The newly empowered federal state created during Reconstruction could restrict immigration much more comprehensively than any state—as Chinese laborers soon discovered.
by Kevin Kenny via Muster on April 2, 2024
Political cartoon of American resistance against British colonial power.

Interposition: A State-Based Constitutional Tool That Might Help Preserve American Democracy

Interposition was a claim that American federalism needed to preserve some balance between state and national authority.
by Christian G. Fritz via Commonplace on June 1, 2023
George Wallace pointing to map of United States with "Wallace Country" written on it.

How the Right Turned “Freedom” Into a Dog Whistle

A new book traces the long history of cloaking racism in the language of resistance to an overbearing federal government.
by Eric Herschthal via The New Republic on December 8, 2022
Billboard saying "Welcome to California Where Abortion is Safe and Still Legal"
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What Pre-Civil War History Tells Us About the Coming Abortion Battle

Fights over fugitive slave laws pitted states against each other and showcased the risks of the federal government not supporting liberty.
by Kate Masur via Made By History on July 14, 2022
Black and white photo of four children holding hands and dressed up in 18th century outfits

A Surprising Factor Influenced How the Framers Voted

The more sons a Founding Father had, the more supportive he was of a strong centralized government.
by Soren J. Schmidt, Jeremy C. Pope via The Atlantic on July 7, 2021
U.S. government medical marijuana crop at University of Mississippi.
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Jeff Sessions is a Hypocrite on States’ Rights. But So is Everyone Else.

Champions of states' rights love federal power when it suits their goals — like Sessions's anti-marijuana crusade.
by Benjamin E. Park via Made By History on January 10, 2018
President Woodrow Wilson riding as a passenger in a two seater car with his chauffeur, George Howard.

States’ Rights or Inalienable Rights?

Some early progressives may have been advocates of states’ rights, but they misunderstood the philosophy of the American Founding.
by Samuel Postell via Law & Liberty on November 13, 2024

Congress’s Power to Investigate Crime Is More Important Than Ever

A new historical study finds that Congress’s authority to investigate crime is “indispensable” to the system of checks and balances.
by Dave Rapallo via Lawfare on November 1, 2024
Political cartoon of clothed animals and Anthony Comstock bathing clothed, and cowering at underwear in a store window.

The History and Legacy of Anthony Comstock and the Comstock Laws

As the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 proposes to revive the Comstock Act, this seven-part forum explores the Act’s influence on American life.
by Lauren MacIvor Thompson, Allison K. Lange, Kimberly A. Hamlin, Nicholas L. Syrett, Cathleen D. Cahill, Magdalene Zier, Andrew Wender Cohen via SHGAPE Blog on September 24, 2024
Scale with hundred-dollar bills weighing down one side.

Markets and the Law

Neoliberalism isn’t just a set of economic precepts—it’s also an architecture of laws passed to reinforce those precepts. Those laws must be changed.
by Amy Kapczynski via Democracy Journal on June 24, 2024
An 1863 illustration from “Le Monde illustré” of formerly enslaved people celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation.

What If Reconstruction Didn’t End Till 1920?

Historian Manisha Sinha argues that the Second Republic lasted decades longer than most histories state and achieved wider gains.
by Eric Herschthal via The New Republic on June 11, 2024
Alexander Hamilton

The Federalist No. 1: Annotated

Alexander Hamilton’s anonymous essay challenged the voting citizens of New York to hold fast to the truth when deciding to ratify (or not) the US Constitution.
by Alexander Hamilton, Liz Tracey via JSTOR Daily on May 30, 2024
Spindle boys in Georgia cotton mill.
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America Has Been Having the Same Debate About Child Labor for 100 Years

A century ago, debates about the failed Child Labor Amendment turned on larger issues about work, childhood, and the role of government.
by Janet Golden via Made By History on May 23, 2024
Emily Brooks.

When NYC Invented Modern Policing: On WWII–Era Surveillance and Discrimination

From the 1880s to the 1940s, New York City was transformed—and so too was the New York City Police Department.
by Matthew Guariglia, Emily M. Brooks via Public Books on April 2, 2024
A U.S. Border Patrol vehicle in front of a section of the U.S.-Mexico border fence near Ocotillo, Calif., on Sept. 13.
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The Myth of ‘Open Borders’

Even before the United States regulated migration, states did. Here’s why.
by Anna O. Law via Made By History on March 23, 2024
The Branch Davidian compound, Mount Carmel, Waco, Texas.

I Will Give Thee Madonna

Kevin Cook and Jeff Guinn on David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and the 1993 siege of Waco.
by Richard Beck via London Review of Books on March 15, 2024
Japanese Americans stand in a line next to a train car, as U.S. military look on

The New Deal's Dark Underbelly

David Beito has penned one of the most damning scholarly histories of FDR to date.
by Marcus M. Witcher via Law & Liberty on January 23, 2024
Alabama Governor George Wallace standing in front of an American map with the words, "Wallace County," written over it.

The Freedom to Dominate

When viewing federal authority as a bulwark for civil rights against local tyranny, we miss what the U.S. government has done to sustain white freedom.
by Erin Pineda via Dissent on January 1, 2024
J. Edgar Hoover

J. Edgar Hoover Shaped US History for the Worse

As director of the FBI for decades, J. Edgar Hoover helped build a massive, professionalized national security state and hounded leftists out of public life.
by Beverly Gage, Micah Uetricht via Jacobin on December 30, 2023
View of a Boston Street, circa 1778.

Commissary Notes and the Dark History of Revolutionary Financing

From the outset of the American Revolution, a lingering problem that plagued the minds of the Continental Congress dealt with its financing.
by Zach Thompson via Journal of the American Revolution on October 12, 2023
Ron DeSantis

DeSantis, Trump and The History of Treating D.C. Residents Like They Aren’t Americans

A history as intertwined with race as with partisanship.
by Gillian Brockell via Retropolis on August 8, 2023
Former President Donald Trump with his attorneys inside the courtroom during his arraignment at the Manhattan Criminal Court on April 4, 2023.

A Brief History of the Ku Klux Klan Acts

These 1870s laws to protect Black voters, ignored for decades, now being used against Trump.
by Joseph Kelly via The Conversation on August 4, 2023
J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer, Nullified and Vindicated

The inventor of the atomic bomb, the subject of Christopher Nolan’s new film, was the chief celebrity victim of the national trauma known as McCarthyism.
by Kai Bird via The New Yorker on July 7, 2023
Cover of "Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance To Federal Power"

The Little Man’s Big Friends

A new book seeks to explain why many Americans, especially but not exclusively in the South, have understood freedom as an entitlement for white people.
by Eric Foner via London Review of Books on May 24, 2023
Collage of Supreme Court and 14th amendment-related images.

Reversing the Legacy of Slaughter-House

A careful examination of the Privileges or Immunities Clause shows what we lost 150 years ago.
by Ilan Wurman via Law & Liberty on April 3, 2023
Roger Taney.

On “Mobility and Sovereignty: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Immigration Restriction”

Examining slavery, Indian removal, and state policies regulating mobility to trace the constitutional origins of immigration restriction in the 1800s.
by Kevin Kenny via Process: A Blog for American History on February 28, 2023
Illustrated figure standing in front of a massive wall of classified documents.

The Cult of Secrecy

America’s classification crisis.
by Patrick Radden Keefe via Foreign Affairs on February 13, 2023
Alexander Hamilton stands guard over the U.S. Treasury building in Washington.

The Constitutional Case for Disarming the Debt Ceiling

The Framers would have never tolerated debt-limit brinkmanship. It’s time to put this terrible idea on trial.
by Thomas Geoghegan via The New Republic on January 6, 2023
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