Donald Trump

Ken Burns’s new documentary unpacks the Revolutionary War—and explains why history doesn’t repeat, even if human nature never changes.

The liberal jeremiad warns that democracy is fragile, institutions must be defended, and that vigilance is the price of liberty.

As much as the Trumpists claim to disavow the War on Terror, they walk a path paved by the most powerful vice president in US history.

The National Park Service announced its plan to return the refurbished statue of Confederate Gen. Albert Pike to a small federal park at Third and D streets NW.

The country’s 40-year-ago embrace of free trade with the U.S. has come back to haunt it.

Lists of great artists say more about the list-maker than the artist.

If we want to understand how we arrived in this authoritarian moment in 2025, we need to understand one of the central pathways that brought us here.

How four presidential administrations managed to evade moral responsibility for the “war on terror” by hiding behind legality and process.

It was founded 250 years ago today—and, oddly, was promptly ordered to attack what is today its biggest base.

Columbus lives on as a political and cultural symbol—hero, villain, myth—revealing how belief, not fact, shapes history.

The second Trump administration has undone the division between political and economic migrants. Did it make sense to separate them to begin with?

They might be surprised that the republic exists at all.

Reflections on Harper's Ferry amid a government shutdown.

Violence has marred the American constitutional order since the founding. Is it inevitable?

Blaming video games for violence saves Americans from having to grapple with deeper, harder to solve societal problems.

How America learned not to fear the inner self but lost its places of belonging.

Globalization left millions behind as a policy and transformed the world politically, a new book argues.

Recent news coverage has called the Privacy Act of 1974 “Watergate-inspired,” but such framing misses the big picture.

How three eras of racial progress gave way to the presidencies of Johnson, Nixon, and Trump.

To understand Congress’s abdication, look at the history of presidential selection.