Person

Donald Trump

Related Excerpts

John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.

A Trump-Biden Tie Would Be a Political Nightmare — But Maybe a Boon to Democracy

The political upheaval of 1824 changed America. The same could happen in 2024.
Trump at a rally and newspaper headlines about immigration.

How America Tried and Failed to Stay White

100 years ago the U.S. tried to limit immigration to White Europeans. Instead, diversity triumphed.
Pro-Israel counterprotesters hold Israeli flags on the edges of a pro-Palestine encampment at Northeastern University in Boston, April 26, 2024.

The New Anti-Antisemitism

The response to college protests against the war on Gaza exemplifies the darkness of the Trumpocene.
1880 chart of American political history

Historians and the Strange, Fluid World of 19th-Century Politics

Why our understanding of the era has been hindered by the party system model.
Richard Slotkin.

“A Theory of America”: Mythmaking with Richard Slotkin

"I was always working on a theory of America."
William F. Buckley Jr. at a press conference.

An Implausible Mr. Buckley

A new PBS documentary whitewashes the conservative founder of National Review.
Book cover of Counterrevolution by Melinda Cooper.

A Tax Haven in a Heartless World: On Melinda Cooper’s “Counterrevolution”

Why should taxpayers fund schools that violate their own values, the Moms for Liberty wonder? A new book traces how this kind of thinking about public spending came to be.
The radioactive plume from the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, dropped by a US B-29 superfortress Bockscar.

Slave to the Bomb

We don’t need to imagine a world ravaged by nuclear war – we’re already living in it.
Donald Trump speaks to the Pastors Leadership Conference at New Spirit Revival Center on September 21, 2016, in Cleveland, Ohio.

Spreading the Bad News

Right-wing evangelicalism’s moral and religious descent into Trumpism has been near-total. Is there a way out?
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.
A racist political cartoon depicting Uncle Sam as an educator teaching racialized colonial subjects in areas recently conquered by the U.S. during the War of 1898, the year of the white supremacist coup and massacre in Wilmington, N.C. and the mass disenfranchisement of Black Americans by the Supreme Court.

Heather Cox Richardson Shows the Importance of Holding Right-Wing Criminals and Frauds Accountable

Richardson’s work is as much about the contradictions of our shared past as it is an urgent call to action around the current authoritarian crisis.
U.S. presidential seal

Founding-Era History Doesn’t Support Trump’s Immunity Claim

Historians Rosemarie Zagarri and Holly Brewer explain the anti-monarchical origins of the Constitution and the presidency.
A group of birds with one standing on top of the rest.

Rules for the Ruling Class

How to thrive in the power élite—while declaring it your enemy.
A supporter of Donald Trump holds a Confederate flag inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after the crowd breached the building as Congress was proceeding with the electoral vote certification of the 2020 presidential election.

Trump's 'Lost Cause,' a Kind of Gangster Cult, Won't Go Away

Lost cause narratives sometimes have been powerful enough to build or destroy political regimes. They can advance a politics of grievance.
Tom Wolfe in profile against the New York City skyline.

The Electric Kool-Aid Conservative

Tom Wolfe was no radical.
Photo of Donald Trump at a podium and pointing.

The Supreme Court Must Unanimously Strike Down Trump’s Ballot Removal

Excluding him, wrongfully, by a close vote of the Supreme Court could well trigger the next Civil War.
SECRET stamped multiples times over the United States emblem.

The Troubled History of the Espionage Act

The law, passed in a frenzy after the First World War, is a disaster. Why is it still on the books?
Gen. Robt. E. Lee, 1886.

After the Civil War, Robert E. Lee Couldn't Run for President, but Trump Can?

Despite Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, a Colorado state judge stretches the word “officer,” permitting him to remain on the state’s ballot.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump prepares to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference CPAC held at the Hilton Anatole on Aug. 6, 2022 in Dallas.
partner

What Civil War History Says About Attempts to Use the Insurrection Clause to Keep Trump From Office

Debates about handling Confederates reveal that the 14th Amendment bars unrepentant insurrectionists from office.
Donald Trump, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, and Vince McMhaon at a press conference before Wrestlemania 23, 2007.

The Misunderstood History of American Wrestling

A recent biography of Vince McMahon presents him as an entertainment tycoon who changed culture and politics. The real story is as banal as it is brutal.