Author: Heather Cox Richardson

It doesn’t feel like much of a Thanksgiving this year. Lots of chairs are empty, either permanently, as we are now counting our coronavirus dead in the hundreds of thousands, or temporarily, as we are staying away from our loved ones to keep the virus at bay. Lots of tables are empty, too, as Americans are feeling the weight of an ongoing economic crisis. Rather than being unprecedented, though, this year of hardship and political strife brings us closer to the first national Thanksgiving than any more normal year. That first Thanksgiving celebration was not in Plymouth, Massachusetts. While...

The General Services Administration has declared president-elect Joe Biden the apparent winner of the US election, clearing the way for the formal transition from Donald Trump’s administration to begin after weeks of delay. Emily Murphy, the Trump appointee at the head of General Services Administration who has been holding up the transition to a Biden administration, notified President-Elect Joe Biden on November 23 that she recognizes his status and will release the money set aside for the transition. This should launch the formal transition process between administrations, as Biden’s people meet with Trump’s people to learn about the issues...

The news today remains Trump’s unprecedented attempt to steal an election in which voters chose his opponents, Democratic candidate Joe Biden and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, by close to 6 million votes, so far. A close second to that news is that the leadership of the Republican Party is not standing up to the president, but is instead seemingly willing to let him burn down the country to stay in office. Never before in our history has a president who has lost by such a convincing amount tried to claw out a win by gaming the system....

Ballot counting in the 2020 presidential election continues, although it sure looks like Democratic candidate Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris are going to win. What has stood out on November 5 was the degree to which Trump and his team have governed by creating their own reality. Now that that image is being challenged, they are flailing. Knowing he would lose the popular vote, Trump intended to win by arguing that Democrats had “stolen” his victory. Before the election, he talked about the dangers of mail-in ballots, setting up the idea that they would somehow be...

The next 48 hours will bring the culmination of the 2020 election season, as those of us who have not already cast our ballots will show up on Tuesday to vote in our local, state, and national elections around the country. Lots of us are exhausted and discouraged, and after the chaos of the past four years, it seems entirely fair to be exhausted. As civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer said, we’re “sick and tired of being sick and tired.” But on this night of calm before the storm, I am the opposite of discouraged. I am excited...

The first and only vice presidential debate for the 2020 election was held on October 7, and it transpired about as anyone would have expected. With the poll numbers as they are, the burden was on Vice President Mike Pence to try to move undecided voters into Trump’s camp, while Democratic vice-presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris simply had to make sure to avoid any major gaffes. But Harris is a good enough debater that she had a loftier goal, too: to make people who didn’t know her well connect with her as a person. Surprisingly, the moderator, Susan Page,...