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In 1860, on the brink of civil war, caped young men with lanterns sought to safeguard democracy. Now, in a nation divided once more, the group has returned to the light. On 21 September, a tweeted image of an eyeball, with the words “WIDE AWAKE,” accompanied an urgent appeal to demonstrators in Washington, eager to protest against Republican plans to nominate a supreme court replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The tweet was part of a rapidly growing interest in the Wide Awakes, a shadowy youth movement that rose up in 1860, as the nation teetered toward civil war, then...

By Steven Webster, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Indiana University As the 2020 presidential election draws near, one thing is clear: America is an angry nation. From protests over persistent racial injustice to white nationalist counter-protests, anger is on display across the country. The national ire relates to inequality, the government’s coronavirus response, economic concerns, race and policing. It’s also due, in large part, to deliberate and strategic choices made by American politicians to stoke voter anger for their own electoral advantage. Donald Trump’s attempts to enrage his base are so plentiful that progressive magazine The Nation called him...

By Mark Krasovic, Associate Professor of History and American Studies, Rutgers University Newark Even after segregation and Jim Crow voting laws came to a formal end in the south, modern politicians remained susceptible to the temptations of racist dog-whistles as a way of mustering the support of white voters and justifying the restriction of minority voting rights. Many southern states have persisted with segregation-era laws banning felons and ex-felons from voting – a restriction that disenfranchised an estimated 6 million voters in 2016, a vastly disproportionate number of them black men. The Republicans have been especially prone to such...

Ron Johnson, the senator from Wisconsin who has led the Republican campaign in the Senate of making unfounded claims about Joe Biden’s son Hunter, is facing a host of questions about his own ethics, including whether he personally benefited from a change in tax law that he sought in 2017. A letter sent by Johnson to the Senate ethics committee in May has revealed the senator began the process of selling a company he partly owned in February 2018, just months after he insisted the Trump administration change a portion of the tax law in a way that ultimately...

Coarse, cruel, chaotic. Donald Trump has been called a lot of things. Even some of his supporters have had a hard time embracing the darker aspects of his personality. Until recently they have, however, trusted the president on one one vital issue: the economy. But with about two weeks to go until the election, there are clear signs that Trump’s claims to have created the “greatest economy we’ve ever had in the history of our country” are unravelling. Perhaps nowhere is that more worrying for Trump than in Wisconsin. Losing Wisconsin ended Hillary Clinton’s presidential chances in 2016. Famously...

The best defense from rumors, hoaxes and propaganda is knowing what to expect ahead of Election Day. News that three trays of mail had been discovered in a ditch in Greenville, Wisconsin, recently spread on social media and evolved into a national talking point for conservative outlets such as Breitbart. President Donald Trump’s administration used the story in its ongoing campaign to sow distrust in voting by mail. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany cited it as evidence of “a system that’s subject to fraud,” and Trump claimed that mail ballots were being “dumped in rivers” and “creeks” during...