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A hand holds a US flag and a pride flag in front of the Supreme Court building in a crowd celebrating the Obergefell v. Hodges decision.
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How the Supreme Court Ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges Legalized Same-Sex Marriage

When Jim Obergefell and his partner John Arthur decided to marry after more than 20 years together, their home state refused to recognize same-sex marriages.
Leonard Peltier adjusts the black bandana around his head.

Leonard Peltier’s Story Isn’t Over Yet

The Native activist spent nearly fifty years in prison for the killing of two F.B.I. agents. In January, Joe Biden commuted his sentence, and he went home.
Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic

The Perils of ‘Design Thinking’

How did the concept become the solution to society’s most deeply entrenched problems?

Teaching the Holocaust Just Got Harder in Mississippi

A new state law forbids education increasing ‘awareness’ of issues relating to race. How are educators supposed to teach history?
William Sentner address a crowd of union workers at a small arms plant

The Radical Midwest of Bill Sentner

St Louis organizer Bill Sentner led some of the most successful labor battles in Midwestern history by uniting workers across race and gender lines.
Frank Hallam, "En Masse Sunners Seen from Pier 45, 4/25/1982" (1982/2012) (collection of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, Gift of the artist)

When NYC’s Piers Were a Sanctuary for Gay Gathering 

In the 1960s, amid the shipping industry's decline, the empty piers became a site for cruising and creativity for gay men in particular.
A naked woman bathes.

How the Hays Code Took the Sex Out of Hollywood

A group of early 20th-century Catholics sought to impose their standards of morality onto the growing and scandal-ridden Hollywood film industry.
Protestors at the Global Climate Strike in London, March 2019.

Why Everyone Hates White Liberals

1988 was a pivotal year in how “white liberals” are perceived by their fellow Americans.
US National Guard troops block off Beale Street as Civil Rights marchers wearing placards reading, "I AM A MAN"

The Classical Liberal Foundation of Civil Rights

The progress we have seen toward civil rights for all Americans is inseparable from the history of classical liberalism.
An NPS interpreter points to a map of Chancellorsville.

Freeman Tilden's "Interpreting Our Heritage" and the Civil War Centennial

How one book shaped the way the NPS interpreted the Civil War.
South Korean soldiers walking through a trench of dead bodies.

The Moral Distortions of the Official Korean War Narrative

June 25 marks the 75th anniversary of the start of the Korean War. But the truth is that the US was a willing partner in mass murder across the peninsula.
Supreme Court viewed through a window; Supreme Court justices' hands on their laps.

The Archaic Sex-Discrimination Case the Supreme Court Is Reviving

In Skrmetti, the Court turned to a decades-old decision once thought to be consigned to history.
An illustration of blurry Korean people in the ruins of a city after a nuclear bombing.

The Atomic Bombs’ Forgotten Korean Victims

Survivors of the nuclear blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still fighting for recognition.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration headquarters.
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Trump May be Repeating Reagan's Deep Sea Mining Mistake

Undermining international oceans governance could damage American interests.
John D. Rockefeller and John D. Rockefeller Jr. wearing top hats.

The Rockefellers and Class Warfare

Viewed purely in terms of statistics, the recycling of the Gilded Age moniker makes sense, but comparison masks what’s unique about today’s inequality crisis.
Florida Governer Ron DeSantis at a press conference

Ron DeSantis Just Invited the Wrath of the Satanic Temple

Florida’s new school chaplain law invites a constitutional crisis as DeSantis bars some religions, defying First Amendment protections on religious liberty.
Cartoon depictinf a man pouring a bowl of sugar babies in front of a group of onlookers.

Birchismo

Culture-shocked Americans in the 1960s were all too happy to take directions from the John Birch Society: take an extreme right and drive forever.
A mouse hovers over a screen filled with buttons for purchase choices that all look the same.

Americans Are Tired of Choice

How did freedom become synonymous with having lots of options?
Workers adjust a metal sheet on a Titan missile assembly line.

The Permanent War Economy Doesn’t Benefit Workers

Advocates of “military Keynesianism” present it as a boon for the working class. In reality, it diverts resources away from social provision.
Open air bus and tourists visiting Glacier National Park.

The Secret Life of George Grinnell, One of America's Greatest Conservationists

"Although the lesson of progressivism took a while to sink in, over time Grinnell resolved to do whatever he could to forestall the sundering of his world."
Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon National Park Turns 100: How a Place Once Called 'Valueless' Became Grand

As Grand Canyon National Park celebrates its centennial, it’s worth recalling the peculiar way the canyon became grand.
Pedestrians, carriages, and a trolley pass by the State street buildings in Westerville, Ohio.

The Ohio Town That Launched a Whiskey War

Westerville became the heart of the Prohibition movement, deploying everything from hymns to bombs to keep their town dry.
Israeli nuclear power plant.

How Israel Deceived the United States About Its Nuclear Weapons Program

Israel is attacking Iran’s nuclear sites, but Tehran’s secret path was blazed by the Israelis.
Oil painting of Margaret Fuller by Thomas Hicks, 1848 (National Portrait Gallery) and frontispiece from first edition of Woman in the Nineteenth Century.

The Mind and Heart of Margaret Fuller

Margaret Fuller was a polymathic intellect and writer, simultaneously ahead of her time and deeply enmeshed in the social and political fabric of her era.
Rufus Anderson

Christ vs. Culture, Religion vs. Politics

Religious leaders hid behind the separation of church and state to uphold the institution of slavery and the forcible removal of Native Americans.
Civil War soldiers on the cover of James Marten's book "The Sixth Wisconsin"

Ancestry.com and the Long Civil War

The sad remnants of a soldier’s life revealed through probate and Ancestry offer a moving glimpse into the afterlife of Civil War service.
Statue of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln Wasn't Born an Abolitionist, He Became One

We live in polarized times when freedom is threatened but this Juneteenth we should remind ourselves that we have overcome far worse.
Highways & Horizons, front and back covers of brochure for the General Motors pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. [Prelinger Library]

Highways and Horizons

The Interstate Highway System created a national polity defined by circulation. To rethink the Interstates is to rethink the United States.
A man pushes a bicycle as he walks amid rubble in the devastated area around Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital, April 3, 2024. (AFP via Getty Images)

Gaza and the Undoing of Zionism

A historian reviews new books by Peter Beinart, Avi Shlaim and Pankaj Mishra on the project that animates Israel’s violence.
Conservative protesters hold signs and flags at a Tea Party protest.

Lone Star Futures

Texas might have been a place to start a conversation about widening the scope of civil liberties, but it has also been a place where those liberties end.
Joe Biden signs the legislation making Juneteenth a federal holiday.

Juneteenth and the Problem of American Freedom

Of course, Juneteenth should be recognized as a Black holiday belonging to Black people. But this is not a day purely of joyful celebration.

Nashville Contra Jaws, 1975

In their time, “Jaws” and “Nashville” were regarded as Watergate films, and both were in production as the Watergate disaster played its final act.
Martin Luther King Jr stands behind a podium.

5 Lessons From the Real Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

This Juneteenth we need to discard the caricatures of King that we so often see and learn from what he actually did and believed.
Individuals salute and hold their hand over their hearts as they watch a parade. A portrait of George Washington hangs in front.

Trump’s Un-American Parade

What looks like an excess of strength may really be a deficit of liberty.
Collage of James Madison writing, Justice Scalia speaking, White House and Constitution.

Putting the "Executive" in “Unitary Executive”

We cannot divorce the independence of the executive branch from its substance.
Abstract painting depicts faces staring at each other from either end of the canvas.

Bridging the Gap

A new book portrays five American historians who published popular books that sacrificed neither intellectual depth nor political bite.
The committee assigned to draft the Declaration of Independence examines the document.

The Declaration of Independence Mourns for Something People Lost in 1776 − and Now, Too

The nation’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence, depicts a wounded, fearful society, teetering on the brink of disaster. Sound familiar?
Graphic of a nickel displays the words "nullification," "compact," and "sever" on Jefferson's head.

Thomas Jefferson Would Like A Word With You

Thomas Jefferson's limited government ideal quickly conflicted with the U.S. Constitution and the dominant Federalist Party, prompting a radical proposal.
Drawings of refugees arriving at Fort Monroe.
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Expect Freedom Upon Arrival

On the slow path to federal action on emancipation during the Civil War.
Gertrude Berg.

The Forgotten Inventor of the Sitcom

Gertrude Berg’s “The Goldbergs” was a bold, beloved portrait of a Jewish family. Then the blacklist obliterated her legacy.
The letters Q and A having a conversation.

The History of Advice Columns Is a History of Eavesdropping and Judging

How an Ovid-quoting London broadsheet from the late seventeenth century spawned “Dear Abby,” Dan Savage, and Reddit’s Am I the Asshole.
Portrait of Pope Leo XIII by Franz von Lenbach, 1886.

The Heresy of Americanism

Jack Hanson on the new pope and his namesake.
Lithograph depicting General Washington leading his troops in battle against British troops.

Why George Washington Integrated the Army

The commander-in-chief initially barred black soldiers from joining the ranks, but he came to understand the value—both moral and strategic—of a diverse force.
Strings descend from the talons of an eagle's foot and hold up a shipping container.

Why Donald Trump Is Obsessed with William McKinley

McKinley led a country defined by tariffs and colonial wars. Trump is drawn to his legacy—and determined to bring the liberal international order to an end.
William Buckley stands behind a podium, surrounded by a throng of people, and waves.

The Real Bill Buckley

Even some liberals toasted William F. Buckley Jr. as a patrician gentleman. A long-awaited new biography corrects that record.
Protestors confronting Army military police.

When the Military Comes to American Soil

Domestic deployments have generally been quite restrained. Can they still be?

The Heritage of Dylann Roof

Ten years after the Charleston massacre, reverence for the Confederacy that Roof idolized is going strong.

An Appeal for Grace

The white historian’s responsibility to radical empathy and refuting the “invented past”.
Lt. Selfridge and Mr. Wright stepping into the Wright aeroplane at Fort Myer, Virginia.

Uh-Oh

“When you invent the plane, you also invent the plane crash.”
The East Boston Tunnel while under construction.

Circumventing the Past

Navigating around the harbor through the East Boston Tunnel.
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