Intended as a tool to circumvent the power of big business in the state legislature, California's ballot initiative process has become yet another channel for the political influence of big money.
We usually parse Dred Scott v. Sandford as the Worst Decision Ever, but it also offers an overlooked political lesson. The Court waded into a high partisan battle and badly damaged the institutions behind the ruling.
American institiutions are threatened with transformation into unrecognizable and undemocratic forms; stopping these changes means holding on to a collective sense of national purpose in the face of misinformation and gaslighting.
The incident that became known as the Boston Massacre didn't have to happen, and didn't have to become a flashpoint for violence after. As political tensions break into violence today, it's worthwhile to think about Boston in 1770.
A founding member of the Commission on Presidential Debates argues that the body must take stock of its rules and procedures after Tuesday's debacle or risk irrelevance.
Independent civil servants checked Richard Nixon's worst impulses to use the executive branch to punish enemies. The independence of the bureaucracy has since eroded, to Donald Trump's advantage.
Historian Guy Lancaster found a letter of praise from his Congressman tough to take in light of the elected representative's disregard for racial justice.
In a close election, a debate can matter, and debates are lost more than they are won. Some examples from the television era of campaigning should give viewers a sense of how to judge Biden and Trump on Tuesday night.
While moving from a party platform to a change in policy is difficult, especially where the Pentagon is concerned, the Democrats seem to recognize a broad-based desire to return America to international cooperation and allocate resources to other national priorities like public health.
Beginning in 2021, New Jersey county officials will no longer be known as "freeholders." Although the author concedes the term is archaic, and "county commissioner" is a more informative descriptor, the term "freeholder" is not a relic of past racism.
Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address demanded that Americans keep the memory of both the Union dead and their cause alive and "hot." The cooling of that memory has enabled backlashes against justice through history, and today.
In practice, as we see today with Trump and company, American celebratory patriotism has often been wedded to a second and far more divisive form: exclusionary mythologizing patriotism. There are alternatives that also deserve recognition as patriotism.
If his lawyer wants to argue that Kyle Rittenhouse was acting in the spirit of those eighteenth-century militias which went outside the law and defied their state government, and especially those who did so in the interest of promoting white supremacy – his case would be historically solid. It would not, however, be an exoneration.
The Pentagon's plan to scrap funding for the Stars and Stripes newspaper isn't just an attack on a historic military institution. It's ignoring the lessons the paper's history offers for efficient operation and integrating military operations with the economic life of the nation.
Police responded brutally to the 1970 Chicano Moratorium protest march in East Los Angeles, including killing journalist Ruben Salazar. This news spread to smaller Chicano communities in the state and beyond and sparked a politicial movement for justice that echoes today.
Many Chinese Americans oppose California's Proposition 16, which would reinstate race-based affirmative action in state university admissions. This support stems from a meritocratic interpretation of Chinese American experiences that is challenged by the xenophobic "Chinese Virus" discourse around COVID-19.
