Person

Donald Trump

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Donald Trump, flanked by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others, shows executive order restarting the Presidential Fitness Test

What’s Behind Trump’s New (Old) Physical-Fitness Test?

He misrepresented the history of the gym-class test. I know because I served on the council that helped modernize it.
Joseph McCarthy

Joseph McCarthy’s War on Voice of America

A largely forgotten campaign of harassment and persecution from the 1950s that still echoes today.
An abolitionist lithograph depicting enslaved people celebrating the Fourth of July while a white judge sits on bales of cotton with his feet on the Constitution, 1840

The Contradictory Revolution

Historians have long grappled with “the American Paradox” of Revolutionary leaders who fought for their own liberty while denying it to enslaved Black people.
A white hand gives a key to another white hand, bypassing a Black hand.

What We Miss When We Talk About the Racial Wealth Gap

Six decades of civil-rights efforts haven’t budged the racial wealth gap, and the usual prescriptions—including reparations—offer no lasting solutions.
Collage of images including spacecrafts, the moon and President Kennedy surround a jumping Elon Musk.

How NASA Engineered Its Own Decline

The agency once projected America’s loftiest ideals. Then it ceded its ambitions to Elon Musk.
Billboards advertising the new Superman film in Times Square.

Superman Was Always a Social Justice Warrior

A closer look at the character’s history shows that the latest movie is true to his past.
World Trade Center towers burning on 9/11.

The Righteous Community: Legacies of the War on Terror

A new book traces how "the wet dream of an ageing militarist has become a fundamental force driving American foreign policy."
John F. Kennedy waves to a cameraman a crowd of supporters in Los Angeles in 1960.
partner

To Bounce Back, Democrats Need a New John F. Kennedy Moment

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

The Actual Politics of Free Speech Is Fueled by a Right-Wing Political Strategy

Self-professed defenders of free speech have become the most fervent advocates and agents of government censorship in the twenty-first century.
Grover Cleveland

The Gilded Age Roots of American Austerity

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

Trump Is Hamiltonian, Not Jacksonian

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

A Supreme Court Justice Wrote the Greatest “No Kings” Essay in History

This opinion is a milestone in the rule of law and is regularly cited by conservative and liberal justices alike.
Alligator

Why Do Fascists Dream Of Alligators?

Long before the new detention facility in Florida, the reptile has featured in the fantasies of Southern racists.
Photo of Claudine gay testifying to Congress.

What a 1964 Book About American Anti-Intellectualism Can Teach Us About the Trump Era

On Richard Hofstadter and the current assault on academia.
National Archives building.
partner

Scratching the Record

On the long history of governments attempting to restrict access to documents about their inner workings.
A throng of Trump supporters, some in colonial garb, march through Washington D.C.

The 19th-Century Precursors to the Crises of Trump’s America

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

Gimme Boer

The recent resettlement of a few dozen Afrikaner “refugees” points to a longer history of U.S. fascination with these Dutch-descended white South Africans.
Scaffolding behind the statue of the rule of law outside the Supreme Court building.

Trump Is Wrong About Birthright Citizenship. History Proves It.

Lawmakers knew the Fourteenth Amendment would apply to the children of immigrants.
A group of workers in hard hats walk through the shallow water of one of the Panama Canal's locks.

‘The Canal Is Ours’

Trump’s threats to take control of the Panama Canal have precipitated a struggle over the country’s sovereignty.
Donald Trump shakes the hand of a border patrol officer while a line of others waits to meet him.

State of Exception

National security governance, then and now.