Ira Katznelson

Material benefits trumped FDR's terrible civil rights records

The New Deal's legacies of infrastructure and economic development, and entrenching structural racism, reveal the potential and mistakes to avoid for the Green New Deal.

How the region switched from being the stronghold of one party to the base of its adversary.

The undefeatable South.

Federal housing policies contributed to the segregation of American cities in the twentieth century. But it was private interests that led the way.

Elites understood that a unified left spelled doom for their economic advantages.

There was once a thriving Black middle class based on farm ownership. But during the twentieth century, the USDA helped erase that source of wealth.

In becoming the party of Trump, the G.O.P. confronts the kind of existential crisis that has destroyed American parties in the past.

McCarthy never sent a single “subversive” to jail, but, decades later, the spirit of his conspiracy-mongering endures.