Power

“A Promised Land” tells of a country that needed a savior.

Washington was a savvy packager of his own personal virtues. He knew that if you don’t engage in a bit of self-aggrandizement, you lose.

Black civil-rights activists—and especially Black women—delivered on the promise of the Founding. Their victories are in peril.

Her name was Julia Chinn.

Such women have long pushed American politics to the right, and their ideas have become mainstream.

Sixty years ago, many GOP leaders resisted radicals in their ranks. Now they’re not even trying.

A review of Robert Elder's new biography of John C. Calhoun.

Biden needs to stare down White supremacy, which requires strenuous enforcement of the laws.

The enduring lesson of American history is that the republic is always in danger when white supremacist sedition and violence escape justice.

Alejandro Mayorkas and the limits of liberal law-and-order immigration politics.

Reagan's commitment to deregulation, aggressive military spending, and diminished oversight created a cocktail of corruption that was worse than Watergate.

It’s time to abandon the assumption that workers have a “natural” home on the center-left.

A cat named Miss Pussy! A racist parrot! Benjamin Harrison’s possums, which he later ate!

The modern GOP isn't the first party to embrace huge conspiracies. But the lessons should be sobering.

Donald Trump's four-year tenure in the White House revealed extraordinary fissures in American society but left little doubt that he is a unique figure.

A wide-ranging conversation with the philosopher on the white supremacist roots of liberal thought, Biden’s victory, and Trumpism without Trump.

From Alexander Hamilton to Richard Nixon and more: meddling, fixing, rigging, fraud, and violence.

Trump, Biden, and public lands.

The answer can change over time.

For decades, the Republican Party has used what's known as "the Southern Strategy" to win white support in the region.

The 1898 Wilmington insurrection showed “how people could get murdered in the streets and no one held accountable for it.”

America is now ruled by a single elite class rather than by local patrician smart sets competing with each other for money and power.

While Herbert Hoover was deeply critical of his successor, he put aside his differences to ensure the peaceful and democratic transition of power.

Disunion is hardly a new theme in American politics. In this moment of tumult, it would be unwise to rule out its return.

The selection of African American Sen. Hiram Revels in 1870 offered great hope — but it was soon dashed.

A visual breakdown of the U.S. Senate by age.

Since Jeannette Rankin was elected in 1916, 352 women have served in the House and 46 in the Senate. About two-thirds entered Congress during or after the 1990s.

Six decades ago, leaders in the GOP backed away from the conspiracy theories peddled by the leader of the increasingly influential John Birch Society.

“There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law,” declared the man who would be America’s sixteenth president.

A new history of five heroes of the revolutionary period considers the power and instability of charismatic leadership.