Author: Heather Cox Richardson

“Euclid’s first common notion is this: things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other. That’s a rule of mathematical reasoning. It’s true because it works. Has done and always will do. In his book, Euclid says this is ‘self-evident.’ You see, there it is, even in that 2,000-year-old book of mechanical law. It is a self-evident truth that things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other.” – Daniel Day-Lewis in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012) And on July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, declaring:...

By a 6 to 3 vote, the Supreme Court handed down Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee on July 1 saying that the state of Arizona did not violate the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) with laws that limited ballot delivery to voters, family members, or caregivers, or when it required election officials to throw out ballots that voters had cast in the wrong precincts by accident. The fact that voting restrictions affect racial or ethnic groups differently does not make them illegal, Justice Samuel Alito wrote. “The mere fact that there is some disparity in impact does not necessarily...

Trump’s Big Lie has a number of elements that echo the argument behind the organization of the Confederacy in 1861. Like the Confederates, the Big Lie inspired followers by calling for them not to destroy America, but to defend it. The insurrectionists of January 6, and those who continue to insist the election was stolen, do not think of themselves as domestic terrorists, but as patriots in the mold of Samuel Adams. “Today is 1776,” Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) tweeted on January 6. The Confederates, too, believed they were defending America. In February 1861, even before Republican President Abraham...