Power

When states began restricting labor by children, verifying a person's age became an important means of enforcement.

A leading historian of Madison's political thought explains that the framer "did not believe in minority rule."

A new book shows just how porous the dividing line has been between the far right and mainstream conservatism.

The Washington Post has compiled the first database of slaveholding members of Congress by examining thousands of census records and historical documents.

The question of how to balance state and national power was perhaps the single most important and most challenging question confronting the early republic.

The story of President Andrew Jackson's 1,400-pound block of cheese.

Democracy is in trouble, but a lawless coup isn’t the real threat.

The context in which King shared his views on the filibuster is the same one in which the Senate now finds itself: amid battles over voting rights legislation.

A new film shows how Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor, stood up to a majority-white city council to push through infrastructure improvements for all.

Abraham Lincoln proclaimed freedom for enslaved people in America on January 1, 1863. Today, we've annotated the Emancipation Proclamation for readers.

The electorate has consistently changed over time as politicians seek to shape it in their favor.

The USDA has become an inefficient monster that often promotes products that are bad for consumers and the environment. Let’s replace it with a Department of Food.

While he opposed slavery and southern secession early in his career, as president Andrew Johnson turned out to be an unsightly bigot.

The Age of Revolution inaugurated a new era in modern history defined not only by new democratic institutions but also by despots and charismatic leaders.

Many people celebrate the U.S. as a nation of immigrants, but nativism has infused its politics from the outset.

“European and Indian men—as captors, brokers, and buyers—used captured and enslaved women to craft relationships of trade and reciprocity with one another.”

Why do some political incumbents adopt aggressive measures to slow the spread of infectious diseases while others do not?

A review of how Dennis Rasmussen understands America's Founding Fathers and their disillusions with the American experiment.

There are more than 400 million guns in Americans' hands.

The former Republican leader played a key role in the Americans With Disabilities Act but stuck with the GOP as the party turned its back on the law.

Much of the anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy in the news today is similar to a movement that swept the country 20 years ago.

Critiques of vaccine mandates continue a neoliberal tradition of idolizing private choice at the expense of the public good.

The history of anti-racial justice rhetoric.

This isn’t the first time a House committee has investigated political violence in the Capitol.

Repeated failures by both political parties to get a decent policy through our 18th-century constitutional structure led to the Affordable Care Act.

A century ago, the most effective school-ban campaign in American history set the pattern: noise and fear, but not much change in what schools actually teach.

In his lifetime, Robert Welch toiled in the mocked and marginal fringe. Today his ideas are the mainstream of the American right.

The debate once again centers on — and stokes — White parents’ anxieties.

Enacting vaccination mandates demands political give and take.

In June 1942, Kenji and just over one hundred other children were taken from their parents and relocated to Manzanar.