Power

A look at how and why African Americans first started to abandon the GOP for the Democratic Party.

Looking back at Horace M. Kallen's collection of essays entitled "Culture and Democracy in the United States."

The Founders knew that executive power was vital but dangerous in any republic.

A new book argues that worship of the Constitution has distorted our politics.

Think this year’s Democratic convention is going to be nuts? One hundred years ago, Democrats took 103 ballots—and more than two weeks—to choose a candidate.

A century ago, the party took a record 103 ballots and 16 days of intense, violent debate to choose a presidential nominee.

John Ganz’s “When the Clock Broke” renders the signal political battles of the present in an entirely new light.

America never really was liberal, and that’s not the right fight anyway. The fight now is for democracy.

In the early nineties, the country turned against the establishment and right-wing populists thrived. A new history reassesses their impact.

The history of American Communism shows that dogma and fervor are no substitute for popular support.

How German Enlightenment thought influenced Abraham Lincoln.

We compiled Reconstruction-era documents to identify 1,250 formerly enslaved Black Americans given land—only to have it returned to their enslavers.

In ‘When the Clock Broke,’ John Ganz revisits the era of Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot to find the roots of our populist moment.

Many recoil at the thought of stronger political parties. But revitalized parties could be exactly what our ailing democracy needs.

As Cornel West is receiving ballot access help from Republicans, 20 years ago Al Sharpton’s campaign for president was largely orchestrated by Roger Stone.

Historian Manisha Sinha argues that the Second Republic lasted decades longer than most histories state and achieved wider gains.

On (not) voting.

Yuval Levin urges us to take America’s greatest constitutional thinker, James Madison, as our lodestar.

Nathan Perl-Rosenthal’s book can guide us through turbulent conversations about revolution, social change, and the founding of America.

Why conservatives killed America’s federally funded theater.

The Insurrection Act is a nuclear bomb hidden in the United States code, giving presidents unimaginable emergency power. No President has abused it. Yet.

The rise of the right remade the GOP—and fundamentally changed how parties operated in American politics.

If it weren’t for the young urban professionals of the 1980s, we’d never have MAGA.

Eugene Debs ran for president from prison. His former bellwether county — and museum — both hold lessons for Trump’s campaign.

All that’s past isn’t necessarily present.

The legacy of the Immigration Act of 1924 and the launching of the Border Patrol, which inaugurated the most restrictive era of US immigration until our own.

A conversation with the legal scholar on why it is unusual that the Constitution is core to American national identity.

How one activist helped turn evangelical women into the backbone of right-wing conservatism.

For generations of American radicals, the path to liberation required a new constitution, not forced removal.

In its reexamination of narratives about the expropriation of Native land, Michael Witgen’s work changes how Native people are in the arc of American history.