Your Revolution Was Dumb and it Filled Us With Refugees

A Canadian take on America's Revolutionary War.

The Souring of American Exceptionalism

Commitment to liberalism once distinguished the U.S. Now, it’s the disdain of elites for their fellow citizens that sets the nation apart.
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The Civil Rights Act was a Victory Against Racism. But Racists Also Won.

The bill unleashed a poisonous idea: that America had defeated racism.
Donald Trump and Theresa May
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Protectionism 100 Years ago Helped Ignite a World War. Could it Happen Again?

Abandoning free trade doesn't just hurt the economy. It threatens peace and stability across the globe.

Why the Civil War West Mattered – and Still Does

The West cared very much about the Civil War.
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Grass Roots Activists Won the War on Smoking. Can They Win the War on Climate Change?

They can if they study the tobacco playbook.
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Liberals, Don’t Abandon the Federal Government

Doing so might kill the next big liberal idea.

Trump’s Loyalty Fixation Recalls One of the US’s Most Disastrous Presidencies

What we can learn about the current moment from Congress' efforts to impeach Andrew Johnson.

At Its Core, the Declaration of Independence Was a Plea for Help From Britain’s Enemies

The intended audience for the document could be found in the royal houses of France and Spain.

The Nineteenth-Century Trump

President Trump is by no means off the mark to call attention to Andrew Jackson as a precursor. The analogy, however, is not necessarily flattering.

The New Working Class

Democrats should abandon the specter of the right-wing hard hat, and recognize today's working class for what it really is.
Trump at the podium, surrounded by other officials.
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Why are Republicans Trapped on Health Care? Because Democrats Stole Their Best Idea.

When Democrats claimed the individual mandate, Republicans lost their best idea for health-care reform.

How the Right Gets Reagan Wrong

And what will happen if they don't start getting him right.

How Nixon Would Have Tweeted Watergate

What President Richard Nixon’s Twitter account might have looked like during Watergate, had social media existed in the 1970s.
Chelsea Manning photo

How The Espionage Act Became a Tool of Repression

This isn’t all history, of course. The Espionage Act is still on the books: Chelsea Manning was charged under it in 2011.

The Making of an Antislavery President

Fred Kaplan's new book asks why it took Abraham Lincoln so long to embrace emancipation.
James Buchanan

What Is the Far Right’s Endgame? A Society That Suppresses the Majority.

The author of a new biography of James McGill Buchanan explains how this little-known libertarian’s work is influencing modern-day politics.

The Architect of the Radical Right

How the Nobel Prize–winning economist James M. Buchanan shaped today’s antigovernment politics.
Obama and Trump at Trump's inauguration.

Why Obama Voters Defected

New findings explain how Trump won them over—and why he probably wouldn’t next time.

Ahead of a Major Supreme Court Case on Gerrymandering, Here Are the Term's Origins

The word is two centuries old.

How Congress Failed to Plan for Doomsday

What would happen if some crazed gunman or terrorist massacred Congress? We don’t really know — and that’s bad news for our democracy.
Daniel Ellsberg.

From the Pentagon Papers to Trump: How the Government Gained the Upper Hand Against Leakers

We may be entering a post-Pentagon Papers era that shifts the power back to political elites, who are ever more emboldened to go after leakers.

Memo to Trump: This Is Why You're Losing

Why the president, who appears allergic to the logic of bureaucracy, keeps getting defeated by that humblest of technologies, the office memorandum.
Police officer with automatic rifle guards the US Capitol building.

Violence Against Members of Congress Has a Long, and Ominous, History

In the 1840s and 1850s, it was all too common.

The Artifacts of White Supremacy

Why fiery crosses, white robes, and the American flag were seized upon by the 1920s Klan in its campaign for white nationalism.

The Thrilling Tale of How Robert Smalls Seized a Confederate Ship and Sailed it to Freedom

He risked his life to liberate his family and became a legend in the process.

Slave Consumption in the Old South: A Double-Edged Sword

Buying goods in the Old South revealed the fragile politics at the heart of master-slave relation.
Lithograph of ladies' fashions from Godey's Lady's Book magazine.

The Women’s Magazine That Tried to Stop the Civil War

Godey’s Lady’s Book, one of the most influential American publications of the nineteenth century, tried to halt the Civil War.

Trump’s Defense of Taking Foreign Money Is Historically Illiterate

The Justice Department lawyers are getting the Founding Fathers all wrong.
Text of Medicine Creek Treaty.

Medicine Creek, the Treaty That Set the Stage for Standing Rock

The Fish Wars of the 1960s led to an affirmation of Native American rights.