Author: Heather Cox Richardson

For a generation, Republicans have tried to unravel the activist government under which Americans have lived since the 1930s, when Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt created a government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and invested in infrastructure. From the beginning, that government was enormously popular. Both Republicans and Democrats believed that the principle behind it — that the country worked best when government protected and defended ordinary Americans — was permanent. But the ideologues who now control the Republican Party have always wanted to get rid of this New Deal state and go back to the...

Trump is shifting his reelection pitch, and it has frightening implications for the country. Over the weekend, the federal crackdown in Portland, Oregon continued with people in unmarked camouflage uniforms arresting peaceful protesters and taking them away in unmarked vehicles. And then, they appeared — for now — to let them go. The administration appears to be constructing a scene of violence and disorder for the news media to show to viewers. It seems clear that the Trump campaign — which got a new director on July 15 – is going to make its case for reelection on the...

Photo by Gage Skidmore and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 The administration escalated its insistence on July 12 that our public schools must reopen on schedule for the fall. On “Fox News Sunday,” Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos told Chris Wallace – who is one of the Fox News Channel’s actual reporters, “We know that children contract and have the virus at far lower incidence than any other part of the population, and we know that other countries around the world have reopened their schools and have done so successfully and safely.” Wallace asked her if it was fair...

It is becoming clearer that there are currently two different versions of America. The White House and Trump supporters are trying to pretend that the world Trump continually tweets about is real, while the rest of the country is proving that reality doesn’t much care about the fictions Trump is peddling. July 6 began with Trump frantic-tweeting, and those tweets were an impressionistic picture of how he hopes to win voters. He defended his performance in combatting what he called “new China Virus” cases, touted the strong stock market, and warned that “if you want your 401k’s and Stocks,...