Power

The U.S. needs a historical reckoning with the true cause of the border crisis: the long, brutal history of border enforcement itself.

Truman seized control of the country’s steel mills during the Korean War. It led to a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court.

Is the groundswell of popular discontent in Europe and the Americas what’s really threatening democracy?

Donald Trump says there is “a crisis of the soul” at the border. He is right, though not in the way he thinks.

The President and his Seneca friend Ely Parker wanted Indians to gain citizenship, but their efforts are mostly lost to history.

There isn’t any rule against tobacco spitting on the House floor, but there is one against wearing a hat.

What do the results of the 2018 midterms portend for the next two years?

“How to Hide an Empire,” explores America far beyond the borders of the Lower 48.

When the going gets tough, the tough start something better.

With “The Apprentice,” the TV producer mythologized Trump as the ultimate titan, paving his way to the Presidency.

From food rationing to drafting soldiers, preparedness and all it involved included a full-scale reorganization of American society, including the NYPD.

New documents reveal that Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign colluded with a foreign government far more than historians thought.

Presidents of both parties stock their Cabinets with corporate leaders.

Thomas Paine, the most radical of American revolutionaries, perhaps most fully understood the millennial potential of the new Republic.

Our fights over nominees might be bitter, but they’re still less contentious than the 19th century.

An eight-year campaign to slash the agency’s budget has left it understaffed and hamstrung. That's good news for corporations and the wealthy.

Sarah Igo’s "The Known Citizen" examines the linked histories of privacy and surveillance in the United States.

How did it come to pass that a weapon banned for military use was deployed against asylum-seekers on the U.S. border?

The Alaska earthquake that put Washington in charge of natural disasters.

For the first time, we are living in a truly post-cold-war political environment in the United States.

How the CIA’s first attempt at regime change nearly failed.

The Founding Fathers relied on deceit in championing American independence—and that has lessons for the present.

The horrors of the fugitive slave laws, the costs of union, and the value of comity.

There’s no consensus on abolishing the Electoral College, which has countered the popular vote in two of the past five presidential elections.

“John Marshall...exhibited a subservience to the executive branch that continues to haunt us.”

The long, entwined history of America First and the American dream.

“The Improbable Wendell Willkie” offers a look at how American politics might have been.

We should look to history – not prehistory – to understand current political challenges.

The political context for one of the worst atrocities ever to take place on U.S. soil.

In the fight over Indiana’s Bloody Eighth, Democrats won the seat, but lost the larger narrative.