United States Archives - Page 17 of 73

Feature

White Men Running (For President)

The DNC’s nostalgic embrace of familiar, and obsolete, white male leadership

May 28, 2019 • by Aaron Landsman

“Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one's own fantasy.” Svetlana Boym, “Nostalgia and its Discontents.” In this 2020 Democratic primary reality TV season, Biden, O’Rourke, Buttigieg, and Sanders all seem to be performing different facets of a kind of idealized white male type. ...

North America

Is Impeachment Really Optional? Sometimes a strong offense is the only defense

May 24, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Yesterday (Thursday) the White House announced that Donald Trump has authorized Attorney General William Barr to unilaterally declassify any documents necessary to perform an investigation of the Mueller investigation. The New York Times headline accurately summarized the move: “ Trump Gives Attorney General Sweeping Power in Review of 2016 Campaign Inquiry .” Today (Friday) Trump ...

Is Impeachment Really Optional? Sometimes a strong offense is the only defense

North America

Impeachment Will Succeed If the Process Demonstrates Very Publicly That Trump is a Tyrant Who Is Unfit for Office and the Republicans are his Enablers

That is all that can be expected, and it is enough!

May 22, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

The Trump administration continues to refuse all Congressional oversight and make a mockery of the rule of law, while Trump himself continues to denounce the Mueller team and his political opponents as “traitors” and to rally his mobs against “enemies of the people.” Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi continues ...

Impeachment Will Succeed If the Process Demonstrates Very Publicly That Trump is a Tyrant Who Is Unfit for Office and the Republicans are his Enablers

Feature

Civil War by Other Means

Or: Somewhere, Carl Schmitt is Smiling

May 21, 2019 • by Laura Nelson

In a piece I wrote for Public Seminar in September 2015, I argued that Donald Trump’s campaign augured a turn to the kind of “Friends/Enemies” political imaginary cooked up by the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. Schmitt was unimpressed by the niceties of liberal democratic practice, and saw politics as a Kampf between irreconcilable parties, where ...

Feature

What Will Leftists Do if Biden Wins?

Nothing, probably, except vote for him in the general election.

May 19, 2019 • by John Stoehr

Bill Scher was my guest last night for a civics program in New Haven. We discussed and debated the ins and outs of impeaching Donald Trump. We disagreed, mostly, but I appreciated Bill’s take, because he works hard to see things with clear eyes. A contributing editor to Politico Magazine, Bill argued there’s little ...

Feature

The Trap Trump is Laying

Defer, deflect and delay

May 18, 2019 • by John Lawrence

Subtlety has never been one of Donald Trump’s strong suits, and I must confess, I have been loathe to attribute great strategic skills to this most incoherent and incompetent of presidents. Yet increasingly, one must begrudgingly acknowledge Trump’s strategy for countering the enhanced congressional oversight resulting from last November’s election. There ...

Feature

What Criminal Justice Reformers Can Learn from the Green New Deal

The political inequalities reinforced by American criminal law require a transformative approach

May 16, 2019 • by Seth Mayer

The decline of America’s democratic institutions has emerged as a central issue in contemporary American politics. In response to voter suppression, manipulation through campaign finance, and foreign interference in elections, Democrats have proposed sweeping reforms to improve electoral integrity and accountability. With the For the People Act, for example, legislators proposed to improve ballot access, ...

What Criminal Justice Reformers Can Learn from the Green New Deal

Blue Monday

How to Move Toward Impeachment, Now

A carefully orchestrated process could help strengthen the Democrats for 2020

May 13, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

The Trump administration continues to defy Congress and to demonstrate its contempt for constitutional democracy, refusing to share an unredacted copy of the Mueller Report with House committees, citing “executive privilege,” and refusing to comply with a number of lawful subpoenas for information, about counterintelligence, obstruction of justice, and tax ...

Feature

Trump’s Emergency Is Part Of A Theatrical Tradition — And Congress Plays A Starring Role

In America, emergencies are normal. Whether they are real or not doesn’t seem to matter.

May 10, 2019 • by Ian Zuckerman

We in the United States are living under a state of emergency. But that’s nothing new. President Trump recently declared an emergency on the U.S./Mexico border, explaining that this was the quickest way to access funds for border wall construction that Congress had refused to appropriate. Some weeks later, Congress passed a ...

Trump’s Emergency Is Part Of A Theatrical Tradition — And Congress Plays A Starring Role

Feature

On These Truths

History can’t save the world. It can’t even save democracy. But it can offer hope.

May 9, 2019 • by Jill Lepore

Jill Lepore's response was originally published on May 9 2019. The day I sat down to write this essay I got an email from a man in South Carolina. He’d been studying for his U.S. citizenship exam and he’d decided to read my book, These Truths: A History of The United States, ...

Feature

National Identities, Popular Histories

Nations are built on both ideals and ugly contradictions – historians have an obligation to both

May 8, 2019 • by Claire Potter

This essay was originally published on May 8 2019. I want to begin with a confession, since it’s always better to admit the embarrassing thing that everybody knows: twentieth century United States historians like me are raised with minimal expectations that become glaringly apparent when we read a book that begins ...

Feature

Are American Indians Part of a United States National History?

This land didn’t just used to belong to indigenous nations — it still does

May 7, 2019 • by Malinda Maynor Lowery

This essay was originally published on May 8 2019. I assume I was invited to participate because my field of study is American Indian history, and this book does not cover a lot of American Indian history. So my role here is to talk about how we could and should deal ...

United States

White Men Running (For President)

The DNC’s nostalgic embrace of familiar, and obsolete, white male leadership

Is Impeachment Really Optional? Sometimes a strong offense is the only defense

Impeachment Will Succeed If the Process Demonstrates Very Publicly That Trump is a Tyrant Who Is Unfit for Office and the Republicans are his Enablers

That is all that can be expected, and it is enough!

Civil War by Other Means

Or: Somewhere, Carl Schmitt is Smiling

What Will Leftists Do if Biden Wins?

Nothing, probably, except vote for him in the general election.

The Trap Trump is Laying

Defer, deflect and delay

What Criminal Justice Reformers Can Learn from the Green New Deal

The political inequalities reinforced by American criminal law require a transformative approach

How to Move Toward Impeachment, Now

A carefully orchestrated process could help strengthen the Democrats for 2020

Trump’s Emergency Is Part Of A Theatrical Tradition — And Congress Plays A Starring Role

In America, emergencies are normal. Whether they are real or not doesn’t seem to matter.

On These Truths

History can’t save the world. It can’t even save democracy. But it can offer hope.

National Identities, Popular Histories

Nations are built on both ideals and ugly contradictions – historians have an obligation to both

Are American Indians Part of a United States National History?

This land didn’t just used to belong to indigenous nations — it still does

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