Author: Heather Cox Richardson

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer announced plans to step down from the court at the end of the term. The 83 years old made the announcement during an appearance with President Joe Biden on January 27. Breyer took his seat on the court on August 3, 1994. While the recent extremes to which Senate Republicans have gone to dominate the Supreme Court have made the seats seem simply to reflect political parties, in fact Breyer’s history on the court shows how American democracy and, with it, the Supreme Court, have become partisan since the 1980s. “I am writing to...

The Pentagon ordered up to 8,500 troops to go on standby in case they are needed to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression. The troops have not been activated. If they are, they will deploy to nations allied with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), nations like Poland or Lithuania or Latvia, to provide help with logistics, medical needs, intelligence, and so on. If activated, the troops will not be authorized to enter Ukraine The story of how we got here: The USSR dissolved in 1991 under pressure from a new alliance of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, joined by most...

Republicans say they oppose the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act because it is an attempt on the part of Democrats to win elections in the future by “nationalizing” them, taking away the right of states to arrange their laws as they wish. Voting rights legislation is a “partisan power grab,” Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) insists. In fact, there is no constitutional ground for opposing the idea of Congress weighing in on federal elections. The U.S. Constitution establishes that “[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by...

The struggle between the Trump-backed forces of authoritarianism and those of us defending democracy is coming down to the fight over whether the Democrats can get the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act through the Senate. It is worth reading what is actually in the bills because, to my mind, it is bananas that they are in any way controversial. The Freedom to Vote Act is a trimmed version of the For the People Act the House passed at the beginning of this congressional session. It establishes a baseline for access to the ballot...