Power

Every five years, the farm bill brings together Democrats and Republicans. The result is the continued corporatization of agriculture.

Rachel Maddow’s podcast tells of American Nazis in the 1940s. But the era’s real and lasting authoritarian danger came from the growth of a national security state.

English colonists claimed they wanted to make peace with the Powhatans, then offered them tainted wine.

James Oakes’s deeply researched book argues that two very different readings of the 1787 charter put the United States on a course of all but inevitable conflict.

The blacklist didn’t just ruin many workers’ careers — it narrowed the range of acceptable movies and contributed to the conservatism of the 1950s.

The Law and Economics movement was one front in the decades-long advance of a revived free-market ideology that became the new American consensus.

What happened when a diplomat teamed up with Sigmund Freud to analyse the president?

We now know a great deal about the crimes he committed while in office. But we know little about his four decades with Kissinger Associates.

Republicans have long made a sport of deriding Washington, portraying it as a dysfunctional, crime-infested “swamp."

Political repression through the suppression of free expression.

Daniel Ellsberg's decision to release the Pentagon Papers didn't happen in a vacuum.

A new account sheds light on the Ford administration’s war against Sen. Frank Church and his landmark effort to rein in a lawless intelligence community.

How America gave up on housing equality.

Fifty years ago, the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization invited the American Indian Movement to Pine Ridge and reignited a resistance that has not left.

Gun control is actually an American tradition.

Behind the Oklahoma City bombing and even the January 6th attack was a military-style assault in Texas that galvanized the far right.

The book was an especially formal response to the complications of white supremacy, segregated democracy, and civil war.

Seventy years after a disgraceful episode of anti-LGTBQ history, we are facing a new wave of McCarthyist fearmongering.

The lessons of the past for suburban affordable housing advocates.

Americans have long nurtured mixed feelings about age and aged leaders. Yet during the country’s founding, a young America admired venerable old sages.

Lincoln's understanding of the preconditions for genuine democracy, and of its necessity, were rooted in this rich soil. And with his help, ours could be, too.

Richard Nixon helped establish Earth Day and poured millions of dollars into conservation, despite his own ambivalence about the environmental movement.

Jefferson’s system depended on shoring up the bulwarks of race and basing the law on a theory of government that withdrew protection from unfavored groups.

Carter’s austerity was part of a bigger project. It didn’t really have much to do with environmentalism.

Can you run for president from a prison cell? One man did in the 1920 election and got almost a million votes.

After Emancipation, Black people fought for public benefits like pensions that would make their newly won citizenship meaningful.

After the English Revolution—and an island’s experiment with republicanism—a genuine restoration was never in the cards.

A far right politics that developed in the middle of the 20th century has prevented Democrats from gaining as they have in suburbs elsewhere.

Thirty years later, an avoidable tragedy has spawned a politically ascendant mythology.

The state GOP's expulsion of legislators Justin Pearson and Justin Jones echoes Georgia's refusal to seat congressman Julian Bond in 1965 for opposing the Vietnam War.