Power

How Robert Segovia used steelworkers and the Catholic Church to build a political machine in Chicago.

To understand westward expansion, the Trail of Tears, the history of Manifest Destiny, and the impacts to Native Americans, one must understand its buildup.

From birthright freedom to birthright citizenship.

The rash ruse was central to Nixon’s strategy to fight the Cold War, and can also tell us a good deal about the famously elusive ex-president himself.

In 1978, Carter protected 56M Alaskan acres, tripled wilderness lands, championed conservation, and foresaw climate risks, leaving a lasting green legacy.

The secret, often missing ingredient to building a majoritarian progressive coalition.

In his history of the John Birch Society, Matthew Dallek says Republicans allowed the extreme fringe to “eventually cannibalize the entire party.”

Two former CIA officials weigh in: "It's time to call him what he is: 'A liar.'"

The John Birch Society pushed a darker, more conspiratorial politics in the ’50s and ’60s — and looms large over today’s GOP.

How transphobia has been a consistent liability for Republicans, and why the right refuses to give it up.

When ranchers began reporting incidents of mutilated cattle, the ensuring panic fed both conspiracy theories and a growing cynicism about the government.

The decline of the John Birch Society offers possible strategies for containing the MAGA movement.

The United States has forgotten the radical German American immigrant socialists who spilled blood for antislavery and other liberatory causes.

On "Power and Liberty," a condensed version of Gordon Wood's entire sweep of scholarship about constitutionalism.

For decades, conservatives were fine with sexually charged cross-dressing entertainment — so long as it reinforced traditional power structures.

The philosophy that drives the GOP's attacks on government and how it has fueled some of our biggest problems.

For many historians today, the present is forever trapped in the past and defined by the worst of it.

Decades of failed promises have left voters apathetic or pessimistic.

A new book about the first lady reveals how she and the ailing President Woodrow Wilson silenced their critics.

1796, the first contested presidential election.

The new era of social consciousness and racial activism in the 1970s would play a pivotal role in the events leading up to the 71-day occupation.

How the Senate has become a bastion of Republican minority rule.

A sweeping new history weaves personal, intellectual, and spiritual narratives into a book that reminds us of the potential of the socialist movement.

America’s classification crisis.

Police K-9 units in the United States emerged during the Civil Rights era. This was not a coincidence.

What the differences between Hiram Fong and Nikki Haley tell us about changes to the GOP.

The crusade against civil liberties during World War I.

The rise of the right-wing paranoid fantasy, egged on by Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene, reflects deep currents in American politics.

Lost wars, especially when defeat comes as a rude surprise, inevitably spark painful self-examination.

Militia groups have long used Waco as a rallying cry. But it was never the example of whiteness under siege that they invoke.