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Congress’s Power to Investigate Crime Is More Important Than Ever

A new historical study finds that Congress’s authority to investigate crime is “indispensable” to the system of checks and balances.
Rose Mackenberg.

The Ghost-Busting 'Girl Detective' Who Awed Houdini

As an undercover investigator, Rose Mackenberg unmasked hundreds of America’s fake psychics.
Four members of House committee on Jan. 6. U.S. Capitol Riot, sitting in a hearing.
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What History Says About The Jan. 6 Committee Investigation

The importance of an unambiguous report that cannot be weaponized by Trump supporters.
Space Shuttle Challenger explosion

How Legendary Physicist Richard Feynman Helped Crack the Case on the Challenger Disaster

Kevin Cook on the warnings NASA ignored, with tragic results.

The Justice Department Is Reinvestigating the 1955 Slaying of Emmett Till

His brutal killing shocked the world and helped inspire the civil rights movement.
Student Carl Griffin shows Senators Walter Mondale and Birch Bayh the bullet holes left by the police shooting at Jackson State.

DOJ Shakeup May Put Civil Rights Probe of 1970 Jackson State, Mississippi, Killings At Risk

The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Act made way for investigations of racially motivated killings. The federal agency enforcing it is in disarray.
Filmmaker Oliver Stone speaks to journalists following a hearing with the House Oversight Committee at the US Capitol on April 1, 2025, in Washington, DC.

Oliver Stone Goes to Washington

Legendary filmmaker Oliver Stone says we’re closer than ever to finally piecing together the mystery of November 22, 1963.
Senator Joseph McCarthy speaking into microphones.

Newly Declassified Documents Reveal the Untold Stories of the Red Scare

In his latest book, journalist and historian Clay Risen explores how the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joseph McCarthy upended the nation.
Karen Silkwood.

Whistleblower Karen Silkwood’s Urgent Message for Us

Karen Silkwood death and smear campaign highlights how retaliation against whistleblowers deflects scrutiny from power by targeting the messenger.
Richard Nixon surrounded by thumbs up emojis.

Hero of 2024: A Half-Century Later, Richard Nixon Was Finally Vindicated

Nixon was quietly vindicated by the Supreme Court in its Trump v. United States. A half-century later, the Supreme Court made clear that he was right all along.
American Indian children in boarding school.

More Than 3,100 Students Died at Schools Built to Crush Native American Cultures

The Washington Post has found more than three times as many deaths as the U.S. government documented in its investigation of Indian boarding schools.
Publicity still from Black Legion, 1937.
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Ohio’s Little-Known Fascist Member of Congress

How a local prosecutor protected white supremacists and went on to a career in Washington, DC.
A stuffed bear in a room of empty children's beds at Willowbrook Hospital.

The Horrors of Hepatitis Research

The abusive experiments on mentally disabled children at Willowbrook State School were only one part of a much larger unethical research program.

A Hundred-and-Nineteen-Year-Old Book That Explains Eric Adams

A collection of political sermons attributed to a crooked machine boss is a handy reference for New York City’s current political chaos.
An illustration of Florence March, a White House maid, and the ghost of a boy inside the White House.

The Thing in the White House

The White House's most terrifying ghost and the maid who saw it.
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Books That Speak of Books

How a subgenre of murder mysteries plays with the way real history is written.
Redacted papers falling to the ground.

The War Crimes That the Military Buried

This large database of possible American war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan shows that the military-justice system rarely punishes perpetrators.
Melinda French Gates and Bill Gates speak during the 'Gates Foundation' press conference at the Annual Meeting 2009 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 30, 2009" by Remy Steinegger.

Philanthropy’s Power Brokers

An in-depth reckoning with the Gates Foundation as a discrete actor is long overdue.

Failures to Act

Almost 1,300 people say the state of New Hampshire failed to act to protect them from child abuse at youth facilities. Here’s what the allegations reveal.
A Black person points to Neshoba county on a map of Mississippi.

The Lynching That Sent My Family North

How we rediscovered the tragedy in Mississippi that ushered us into the Great Migration.
New York City's Twin Towers.

New 9/11 Evidence Points to Deep Saudi Complicity

Two decades of U.S. policy appear to be rooted in a mistaken understanding of what happened that day.
Plastic kitchen containers in red liquid.

How 3M Discovered, Then Concealed, the Dangers of Forever Chemicals

The company found its own toxic compounds in human blood—and kept selling them.
Angela Davis

The AAUP and the Angela Davis Case

Revisiting the AAUP's 1971 UCLA investigation.
Deb Haaland.

Deb Haaland Confronts the History of the Federal Agency She Leads

As the first Native American Cabinet member, the Secretary of the Interior has made it part of her job to address the travesties of the past.
A field of cotton.

What a Series of Killings in Rural Georgia Revealed About Early 20th-Century America

On the continuing regime of racial terror in the post-Civil War American South.
Tobias Menzies (right) as Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in "Manhunt."

The Real History Behind Apple TV+'s 'Manhunt' and the Search for Abraham Lincoln's Killer

A new series dramatizes Edwin Stanton's hunt for John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators in the aftermath of the president’s 1865 assassination.
Picture of William Belknap sitting in a chair.
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Mayorkas Almost Became the Second Cabinet Member Impeached. The First Was a Civil War Hero.

Belknap’s downfall was his decision to abuse his authority to appoint “sutlers” or civilian merchants who ran trading posts that served military outposts.
Photos and newspaper clippings connected with red string

How We Lost Our Minds About UFOs

No, aliens haven’t visited the Earth. Why are so many smart people insisting otherwise?
Refugees board an Air America plane in Da Nang, Vietnam, on Jan. 23, 1968.

Pensions for the “Deep State:” Republicans Push Benefits for the CIA’s Secret Vietnam-Era Airline

Marco Rubio and Glenn Grothman want to recognize the contribution of Air America, the CIA airline that supported secret wars in Laos and Cambodia.
Files in Guatemala’s Historical Archive of the National Police. Photo by Luis Soto.

In the Best Interest of the Child

A new book gets inside Guatemala’s international adoption industry and the complicated context of deciding a child’s welfare.

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