Author: Heather Cox Richardson

Obamas tag team delivery of inspiring praise for Harris and dire warnings about Trump on DNC’s second night

At Chicago’s United Center on August 20, the delegates at the Democratic National Convention reaffirmed the recent online nomination of Kamala Harris for president. The ceremonial roll-call vote featured all the usual good-natured boasting from the delegates about their own state’s virtues, a process that reinforces the incredible diversity and history of both this land and its people. The managers reserved the final slots for Minnesota and California—the home states of Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz and presidential candidate Kamala Harris, respectively—to put the ticket over the top. When the votes had been counted, Harris joined the crowd...

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Overturning neoliberalism: Harris-Walz team cements the emergence of a new Democratic Party

Vice President Kamala Harris’s choice of Minnesota governor Tim Walz to be her running mate seems to cement the emergence of a new Democratic Party. When he took office in January 2021, President Joe Biden was clear that he intended to launch a new era in America, overturning the neoliberalism of the previous forty years and replacing it with a proven system in which the government would work to protect the ability of ordinary Americans to prosper. Neoliberalism relied on markets to shape society, and its supporters promised it would be so much more efficient than government regulation that...

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Revolutionary moments: How American autocracy and democracy both happen slowly and then all at once

It seems a new America began recently, and I have struggled ever since to figure out what the apparent sudden revolution in our politics means. I keep coming back to the Ernest Hemingway quote about how bankruptcy happens. He said it happens in two stages, first gradually and then suddenly. That is how scholars say fascism happens, too — first slowly and then all at once — and that is what has been keeping us up at night. But the more I think about it, the more I think maybe democracy happens the same way, too: slowly, and then...

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Corporate Autocracy: Trump’s latest corruption scandal shows a changed nature of organized crime

Aaron C. Davis and Carol D. Leonnig of the “Washington Post” reported there is reason to believe that when Trump’s 2016 campaign was running low on funds, Trump accepted a $10 million injection of cash from Egypt’s authoritarian leader Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. It is against the law to accept direct or indirect financial support from foreign nationals or foreign governments for a political campaign in the United States. In early 2017, CIA officials told Justice Department officials that a confidential informant had told them of such a cash exchange. Those officials handed the matter off to Robert Mueller, the...

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Normalizing Hate: How Republicans have increasingly advocated violence as a way to gain power

At a Trump rally on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, a shooter on the roof of a building about 400 feet from the stage apparently shot eight bullets at the former president and into the crowd. Trump appeared to flinch and reach for his right ear as Secret Service agents crouched over the former president. When the agents got word the shooter was “down,” they lifted Trump to move him out. He asked to get his shoes and then to put them on. With that accomplished, Trump stood up with blood on his face, exposed to the crowd, and...

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Project 2025: Russell Vought’s plan to force the United States into a theocracy if Trump seizes power

“The Washington Post” published an article by Beth Reinhard examining the philosophy and the power of Russell Vought, the hard-right Christian nationalist who is drafting plans for a second Trump term. Vought was the director of the Office of Management and Budget from July 2020 to January 2021 during the Trump administration. In January 2021 he founded the Center for Renewing America, a pro-Trump think tank, and he was a key player in the construction of Project 2025, the plan to gut the nonpartisan federal government and replace it with a dominant president and a team of loyalists who...

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