Power

The new Netflix miniseries makes the 1881 killing of President James Garfield feel thrillingly current.

The most consequential shift that year was not one of battle lines but of ideology.

The early-20th-century socialist and New York mayoral candidate Morris Hillquit saw liberalism and democracy as a foundation for a transition to socialism.

The 1894 election cycle holds some key lessons for partisan gerrymanders today.

History has overlooked the real architect of Joe McCarthy’s purges: his wife.

For many, Dick Cheney epitomized idealistic foreign policy hubris.

The series dramatizes the brief tenure of the 20th president, who was fatally shot by Charles Guiteau, a lawyer who believed he’d secured Garfield’s election.

How the conservative scholar’s 1996 bestseller anticipated blaming everything on “woke.”

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.

He died an irrelevant, all-but-forgotten figure—and mostly had himself to blame.

After 9/11, he used his role as President George W. Bush’s chief strategist to approve the use of torture and steer U.S. occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The struggle over loyalty oaths reveals how Americans learned to wield faith and coercion in the name of freedom.

Off-year elections were meant to insulate states from federal trends. That still matters.

On the inherent contradictions behind the American revolutionary dream.

The last American crisis over civilian-military relations ended with a general’s historic choice.

The notion that democratic elections should allow voters to make a real choice between candidates sits uneasily with untrammeled redistricting power.

There are parallels between the John Brown raid and the murder of Charlie Kirk. But only one man seized the moment to start changing the course of history.

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.

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.

Some delegates at the Constitutional Convention wanted a strong executive, while others feared the American president might become a king.

The former President once made an offhand remark about Charles Manson’s guilt. The reaction shows how aberrant Donald Trump’s rhetoric is.

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

The Founders were inspired—and threatened—by the independence and self-governance of nations like the Iroquois Confederacy.

Sending Redcoats to American cities worked in the short term. But over time, it alienated even the colonists most loyal to the British.

James Madison and John Marshall would say Trump’s tariffs are legal.

He was denounced by rebel propagandists as a tyrant and remembered by Americans as a reactionary dolt. Who was he really?

These proposals sought to change the United States’ name, abolish the presidency, and set a limit on personal fortunes, among other measures.

After a century of big-government bureaucracy, the U.S. has a developer-in-chief.