Power

That’s not how separation of powers works under the U.S. Constitution.

America’s early leaders were worried not only about demagogues like Donald Trump, but about the rise of an antidemocratic, wealthy elite that goads such men on.

Do judges have the power to enforce their rulings if the executive branch refuses to comply?

In a new book, Jeffrey Toobin makes a convincing case that Ford’s pardon of President Nixon set the stage for unchecked presidential power.

Libertarianism, fascism, and democracy.

Donald Trump’s model of political leadership? The cigar-chomping, baseball-bat swinging Meade Esposito.

If RFK is confirmed, he is likely to fail for reasons similar to those for past political choices for the cabinet.

The impact can linger not just for years but decades.

Created in 1867, the short-lived office was mired in the ongoing American strife after the Civil War.

In 1931, Herbert O. Yardley published a tell-all book about his experiences leading a covert government agency called the Cipher Bureau.

Hard thinking on difficult and uncomfortable questions about how to keep everything from falling apart.

A previous, dark period of American history paired ethnic exclusion through mass deportations and ideological exclusion through political repression.

What the President’s confrontations with Panama, Greenland, Canada, and Colombia suggest about his expansionist vision.

President Donald Trump says McKinley made the United States prosperous through tariffs. Historians say that’s an incomplete understanding of the 25th president.

The attack on it is a violation of the nation’s post–Civil War rebirth.

NYC history suggests that the Left might profitably revive proportional representation as a tool to build its electoral strength.

He’ll run into the same roadblocks as Presidents Taft, Roosevelt, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush, among others.

I covered the 1989 fight over George H.W. Bush's secretary of defense nominee. It feels awfully familiar.

Frances Perkins’ challenged the United States’ restrictive immigration policies as FDR’s Secretary of Labor.

Trump's foreign policy is not as unprecedented as it seems.

The “Groypers,” the furthest-right fringe of Trump’s coalition, want the party to adopt an overtly white nationalist agenda.

Jonathan Gienapp's attack on originalism deserves a serious response.

And is probably still at it. As newly released classified documents confirm activists’ long-held suspicions, the disclosures should also alert us to current dangers.

The worship of military technocrats underwrites American failures abroad.

Reagan’s capacity to inhabit and generate legend stemmed from his own impulse to substitute pleasing fictions for inconvenient facts.

Were the Knights of the Golden Circle responsible for Lincoln’s assassination? No one knows, but far-right secret societies always draw power from speculation.

The U.S. faces the likelihood of a bruising and raucous set of confirmation hearings — a clear break from the cooperative system the founders established.

Theodore Roosevelt started a version of DOGE too, but it failed to achieve much.

Michael Boskin’s volume gives a grim account of the state of federalism today.

We have yet to solve the problems that Carter confronted head-on as president.