Power

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.

Progressive Era reformers hoped to amend the Constitution. The democratic reforms that they achieved are well known. But what about their failures?

And southern politicians' failed attempts to repeal it.

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.

On April 5, 1910, the world was stunned by socialists’ victory at the ballot box in Milwaukee.

The National Guard, the true descendent of the citizen-soldier militia, has become a sad and incoherent shell of itself.

President Warren G. Harding paid not one, but two women to remain quiet about their affairs with him.

When the smoke cleared in D.C. following the 1968 riots after the assasination of MLK, the city's black communities organized to rebuild a more equitable city.

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.