Power

McCarthy never sent a single “subversive” to jail, but, decades later, the spirit of his conspiracy-mongering endures.

When J.F.K. ran for President, a team of data scientists with powerful computers set out to model and manipulate American voters. Sound familiar?

There is, and always has been, a vanishingly thin line between charismatic democratic rulers and charismatic authoritarians.

Black people suffer disproportionately from police violence. But white skin does not provide immunity.

All empires fall. When they do, the violence and terror they’ve wrought on others has a way of coming back around.

Who counts determines whose interests are represented in government.

Before presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, before Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, there was Congresswoman and firebrand Bella Abzug.

Why the framers created the Electoral College — and why we need to get rid of it.

How immigration enforcement and policing became entwined

They understood that revolution means dismantling old power structures, violently if necessary.

Worried that the presidential power to undo convictions can be taken too far? Look no further than Lincoln’s successor.

The long history behind the Army's Jim Crow forts.

In 1860, a novel paramilitary-style organization mobilized hundreds of thousands against the Southern planter class.

She designed Social Security and public works programs that helped bring millions out of poverty. Her work has been largely forgotten.

About 8,500 women attended the camps inspired by the CCC and organized by Eleanor Roosevelt—but the "She-She-She" program was mocked and eventually abandoned.

Is being "political" the central force in our identities?

Two recent books put the reemergence of anti-immigrant sentiment in the Trump era into historical relief.

Indigenous scholars have long contested the “virgin-soil epidemics” thesis. Today, it is clear that the disease thesis simply doesn’t hold up.

Charles Sumner and the fight for equal naturalization rights.

The real challenge is not simply to replace Trump, but to fix a system that produces, promotes, and protects the toxicity that defines his presidency.

We all know, in the abstract, that Wilson was a white supremacist. But here’s how he wielded his racism against one accomplished Black American.

Dustin Tahmahkera details the life of the last chief of the Comanches, Quanah Parker.

When Thomas Jefferson penned ‘all men are created equal,’ he did not mean individual equality, says Stanford scholar.

The ideology of the men who celebrated the United States while fighting for its dissolution is still very much alive.

GOP-led state legislatures have not only prevented voters from exercising their rights as citizens, they have usurped local control to remove monuments legally.

Two new books look at the history of Latinx Democrats and Republicans and the role each will play in the future.

The untold story of the ideological realignment that upended the nation.

Myrlie Evers began to weep when she heard the Mississippi Legislature vote to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag.

How a party spent decades making itself white.

A review of "How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America."