Power

In 1880, a new generation helped decide the closest popular vote in U.S. history.

The collapse of the Republican Party.

The verdict was unanimous.

The modern conception of freedom emerged as an antidemocratic reaction by elites who wanted to curtail state power.

A Trump-Biden transition is sure to be scary. But it’d be hard to beat Buchanan-Lincoln.

A political history of the present moment.

Radical Black thinkers have long argued that racial slavery created its own unique form of American fascism.

Pursuing a Native alliance powerful enough to resist the American invaders, the Shawnee leader and his prophet brother envisioned a new and better Indian world.

Debates about what should be America’s role in the world are not new—neither is the slogan “America First.”

The messy election of 1876.

The controversy surrounding the 2000 presidential election led to sweeping voting reforms, but opened the door to a new set of problems still affecting us.

From Claudio Saunt's Cundill Prize-nominated "Unworthy Republic."

Rick Perlstein's "Reaganland" charts the conservative counter-revolution that moved the US to the right.

A rally at Faneuil Hall in support of the Fourteenth Amendment and congressional investigation of southern disfranchisement.

Political contests over the ideological slant of the Court are nothing new.

The gambit was cynical and disruptive, but in the end it didn’t work.

When public opinion favored sheltering youth from adult society, the Freeville Republic immersed them in carefully designed models of that society instead.

That’s the lesson of Dwight Eisenhower’s serious heart attack.

A brief history of a political dog whistle.

The administration’s historically low ceiling for refugee resettlement may signal the end of an era.

A new book charts the long contest between elites and the forces of democracy seeking to dismantle their power.

Hospitalized presidents who don’t enact the 25th Amendment.

On-time elections are a key part of ensuring the promise of American democracy.

In 1790, George Washington fell severely ill, threatening his life and the young nation he led.

They are beholden only to their patient, not to the American people.

The president contracted influenza while attending peace talks in Paris, but the nation was never told the full, true story.

The danger of President Trump's rhetoric.

A new biography of Joseph McCarthy does not reckon with the devastating effects of anti-communism.

His conception of what appeals to suburban voters is frozen in the past.

It can be hard to know what the Founders intended when they didn't know, either.