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Barack Obama

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A Mexican family stands next to the border wall between Mexico and the United States, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico on May 23, 2017.
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America’s Border Wall Is Bipartisan

Biden continues a tradition of building fences at the US-Mexico border that long precedes Donald Trump.
by Mary Mendoza via Made By History on October 30, 2023
Congo Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, hands bound, sits in the bed of an army truck under guard of Congolese soldiers on Dec. 2, 1960, one day after his arrest by troops loyal to Col. Joseph Mobutu.

Open the Congo Files and Face Up to What the CIA Did

When Congo gained independence during the Cold War, secret U.S. actions undermined its young democracy. It’s time to make up for that.
by Stuart A. Reid via Washington Post on October 24, 2023
Two women working for the 1940 census.

'Are You Still Living?'

Who is counted by the census, how, and for what purpose, has changed a lot since 1790.
by Kasia Boddy via London Review of Books on October 19, 2023
A Newton's Cradle where a black ball prepares to swing into 4 white ones.

Black Success, White Backlash

Black prosperity has provoked white resentment that has led to the undoing of policies that have nurtured Black advancement.
by Elijah Anderson via The Atlantic on October 16, 2023
Group portrait of the first African-American legislators in Congress, 1872.

Reclaiming the American Story

To Heather Cox Richardson, the battle for our history is the battle for our democracy. And we may be nearing the endgame.
by Peniel E. Joseph via Democracy Journal on September 18, 2023
Isaiah Berlin

Cold War Liberalism Returns

A left that is ambivalent about liberalism can still seek to engage it.
by Patrick Iber via Dissent on September 5, 2023
Joe Biden holding hands with Black members of Congress.

Black Class Matters

Class conflict undermines assumptions about political solidarity.
by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor via Hammer & Hope on August 30, 2023

The Life of the Party

In his latest book, Michael Kazin argues that the Democrats have long sought to build a “moral capitalism.” Have they ever succeeded?
by Osita Nwanevu via New York Review of Books on August 29, 2023
Five generations of a family pose at the plantation where they were enslaved, soon after Union forces arrived in Beaufort, South Carolina, 1863.

More Than 100 U.S. Political Elites Have Family Links to Slavery

Among America's political elite, 5 living presidents, 2 Supreme Court justices, 11 governors, and 100 legislators have ancestors who enslaved Black people.
by Tom Lasseter, Lawrence Delevingne, Makini Brice, Donna Bryson, Nicholas P. Brown, Tom Bergin via Reuters on June 27, 2023
Ron DeSantis's head photoshopped onto the body of a revolutionary war soldier.

Ron DeSantis’s Context-Free History Book Vanished Online. We Got A Copy.

Ron DeSantis, who has attacked Florida history lessons and aims to run for president, dismisses slavery in his 2011 book as a “personal flaw” of the Founding Fathers.
by Gillian Brockell via Retropolis on May 21, 2023
Migrants in line for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, barbed wire in the foreground.
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Biden’s Border Policies Target Haitians. That’s No Accident.

The long history undergirding our harsh bipartisan migration policies.
by Leslie M. Alexander via Made By History on May 11, 2023
Image of an AR-15

The Gun that Divides a Nation

The AR-15 thrives in times of tension and tragedy. This is how it came to dominate the marketplace – and loom so large in the American psyche.
by Alex Horton, Josh Dawsey, Todd C. Frankel, Shawn Boburg, Ashley Park via Washington Post on March 27, 2023
A U.S. Army officer posing after a battle at the Baghdad airport, April 2003.

Blundering Into Baghdad

The right—and wrong—lessons of the Iraq War.
by Hal Brands via Foreign Affairs on February 28, 2023
Robet Kagan resting his head in his hands in a contemplative position, with a dark red background

Robert Kagan and Interventionism’s Big Reboot

He fell from favor after the disaster of the Iraq War. But he was always biding his time.
by Samuel Moyn via The New Republic on February 14, 2023
Then–Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama in Mitchell, S.D.

What Does It Take to Win?

A new history of American politics examines the past and future of political realignments.
by Kim Phillips-Fein via The Nation on January 24, 2023
Photograph of protesters and text from a 1944 edition of "Are You An American?"

The Failure of a Public Philosophy

How Americans lost faith in the possibility of self-government.
by Win McCormack via The New Republic on November 23, 2022
Pew Research chart showing rising earnings disparity between young adults with and without college degrees

Pushing Everyone Into College Was a Policy Response to Other Policy

None of it happened by mistake.
by Freddie deBoer via Freddie deBoer on November 21, 2022
Side-by-side presidential portraits of George Washington, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush

The Presidents Who Hated Their Presidential Portraits

Theodore Roosevelt said his made him look like “a mewing cat.” Lyndon Johnson called his “the ugliest thing I ever saw.” Ronald Reagan ordered a do-over.
by Ronald G. Shafer via Retropolis on September 7, 2022
A vacant home surrounded by a chain link fence is seen in Los Angeles, February 16, 2010.

Why Obama-Era Economists Are So Mad About Student Debt Relief

It exposes their failed mortgage debt relief policies after the Great Recession.
by David Dayen, Lindsay Owens via The American Prospect on August 31, 2022
The cover of the book "This Earthly Frame," depicting clouds swirling around the US Capitol dome.

The Struggle to Make the United States Secular

How progressives came to think that any recognition of Christianity by a public institution violates others’ rights.
by Johann N. Neem via Los Angeles Review of Books on July 15, 2022
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