Author: Heather Cox Richardson

A “White America” First Caucus: When the party of Abraham Lincoln becomes the party of Jefferson Davis

A “White America” First Caucus: When the party of Abraham Lincoln becomes the party of Jefferson Davis

Posted by | Apr 17, 2021 |

News broke on April 16 that a number of pro-Trump House Republicans, including Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and Paul Gosar (R-AZ), are organizing the “America First Caucus,” which calls for “a degree of ideological flexibility, a certain intellectual boldness… to follow in President Trump’s footsteps, and potentially step on some toes and sacrifice sacred cows for the good of the American nation.” The seven-page document outlining their ideas, obtained by Punchbowl News, is a list of the grievances popular in right-wing media. It calls for regulation of “Big Tech,” which right-wing commentators claim is biased...

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Seeking racial justice in court: On trial is also our fundamental principle of equality before the law

Seeking racial justice in court: On trial is also our fundamental principle of equality before the law

Posted by | Apr 14, 2021

At about 2:00 in the afternoon on April 11, a white police officer in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, shot and killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright, a Black man, after what seems to have been a routine traffic stop turned up an arrest warrant. The following day, on April 12, the Brooklyn Center police chief told reporters that the arresting officer intended to fire her Taser at Wright, but instead fired her gun. Wright’s death took place about ten miles from where Derek Chauvin is on trial for killing George Floyd in Minneapolis last May. Then a police officer, Chauvin knelt on...

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When lawmakers fall weirdly out of step with their party’s history and the will of the country

When lawmakers fall weirdly out of step with their party’s history and the will of the country

Posted by | Apr 11, 2021 |

I spent much of April 5 thinking about the Republican Party. Its roots lie in the immediate aftermath of the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in spring 1854, when it became clear that elite southern slaveholders had taken control of the federal government and were using their power to spread their system of human enslavement across the continent. At first, members of the new party knew only what they stood against: an economic system that concentrated wealth upward and made it impossible for ordinary men to prosper. But in 1859, their new spokesman, Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln, articulated a...

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A tragic cost of failure: Proof that the federal government has a role in combatting the pandemic

A tragic cost of failure: Proof that the federal government has a role in combatting the pandemic

Posted by | Apr 10, 2021 |

The 1918 influenza pandemic killed at least 50 million people across the world, including about 675,000 people in the United States. And yet, until recently, it has been elusive in our popular memory. America’s curious amnesia about the 1918 pandemic has come to mind lately as the United States appears to be shifting into a post-pandemic era of job growth and optimism. A year ago, I noted that we were approaching 17,000 deaths from Covid-19. Now our official death count is over 560,000. If anyone had told us a year ago that we would lose more than a half...

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From stolen votes to stolen bases: Why our political system does not reflect the will of the majority

From stolen votes to stolen bases: Why our political system does not reflect the will of the majority

Posted by | Apr 5, 2021 |

The Republican outrage over Major League Baseball moving the All-Star game out of Georgia after the passage of the state’s new voter suppression law reveals a bigger crisis in American democracy: the mechanics of our current system do not reflect the will of the majority. Consumer-driven corporate America is increasingly throwing its weight against the new voter suppression measures across the country. While MLB and Coca-Cola are out front on the new Georgia voting law, American Airlines, Microsoft, and Dell are all opposing the new Texas voter restriction measures. These corporations are focused on those Americans with buying power,...

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Keeping Blacks from the polls: How Republicans adopted the playbook former Confederates used to halt Reconstruction

Keeping Blacks from the polls: How Republicans adopted the playbook former Confederates used to halt Reconstruction

Posted by | Mar 31, 2021

Since the Civil War, voter suppression in America has had a unique cast. The Civil War brought two great innovations to the United States that would mix together to shape our politics from 1865 onward: First, the Republicans under Abraham Lincoln created our first national system of taxation, including the income tax. For the first time in our history, having a say in society meant having a say in how other people’s money was spent. Second, the Republicans gave Black Americans a say in society. They added the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing human enslavement except as punishment...

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Knezelism of the Week