Power

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.

Jonathan Alter on Jimmy Carter ditching politics for truth.

Lessons from 1800.

Why President Trump’s refusal to commit to accepting the election results is so dangerous.

Reactionary leaders are invoking communism as a way of attacking the left, says author and activist Richard Seymour.

High-stakes debates put candidates in the hot seat. But are they helpful to voters?

In our current politics we must be attentive to how talk of American freedom has long been connected to the presumed right of whites to dominate everyone else.

The system that is nobody’s first choice.

A hundred years ago, the U.S. was riven by disease, inflamed with racial violence, and torn between isolation and globalism. Sound familiar?

Nikole Hannah-Jones gives the credit for ending quotas to civil rights reformers. The truth is a bit more complicated.