Recent Posts

The Democratic National Committee’s platform committee approved a draft of the party’s 2020 agenda this week and committee cochair Denis McDonough promptly described it as the “boldest Democratic platform in American history.” It’s not. Continue reading

Yes, the Civil War brought an end to the slave order of the South and the rule of the plantation oligarchs who embodied white supremacy. But the Northern victory was short lived — Southern ideals spread quickly to the West. It's all about America’s ongoing battle between oligarchy and democracy.

For all that Trump seems eager to win reelection, he appears to have little interest in governing. Continue reading

A year ago, historian Heather Cox Richardson started writing small essays on the history behind the headlines and posting them to her Facebook page as LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN. Today, over half a million readers (and counting) click on her dispatches each day.

The director of the CDC has capitulated. Under the guise of “guidance,” Dr. Robert Redfield recently released a full-throated promotion of Trump’s latest pandemic talking points urging all schools to reopen in the fall. Continue reading

Attorney General William Barr testified today before the House Judiciary Committee. His combative answers confirmed that he is Trump’s man. He is committed to the narrative that dangerous anarchists are endangering law and order, and that Trump was unfairly targeted by FBI agents in what Barr calls “Russiagate.” Continue reading

Print editions of newspapers and magazines have taken significant hits across the world as financial setbacks caused by COVID-19 rip through newsrooms. Will they disappear after the pandemic? Reporting from The Journalism Crisis Project

When the horse-drawn wagon carrying the body of Rep. John Lewis began to make its way up the Edmund Pettus Bridge, it felt like there was a stirring of the ancestors, those in that “great cloud of witnesses” whose spirits are ever with us and who were with a young John Lewis the day police officers nearly killed him for daring to march across the bridge as part of the work to get black people the right to vote. Continue reading

Attorney General William Barr will testify before the House Judiciary Committee tomorrow for the first time. The Attorney General of the United States is, of course, not the president’s lawyer. The AG is supposed to be the attorney for the United States, protecting the rule of law. (The office of the president has its own lawyer—the White House Counsel—and the president has his own bevy of personal lawyers.) Continue reading

No New Deal in sight