Power

Understand that if Trump succeeds the result will not be the harmless resurrection of a quaint jurisprudential artifact.

On the early career of the actor-cum-politician who changed America.

The Radical Republican oversaw federal spending at the dawn of Reconstruction. How did his support for Black equality affect his leadership in the House?

The scene at the 1964 Republican National Convention, when Barry Goldwater was nominated and black Republicans’ worst fears about their party were confirmed.

The revolutionary roots of a corrosive national pastime.

The populist turn in our politics is best understood as a revival of old categories of political economy.

Trump's second administration is 'unprecedented' to some, but historians find parallels in ancient Rome, Nazi Germany, and Latin American dictatorship.

The late conservative thinker, who died 20 years ago Saturday, has transcended the pariah status imposed on him during his life.

USAID grants may have cracked constitutional spending limits.

Conservatives might be tempted to hold up Reagan as representative of a nobler era. They’d be wrong.

How Trump's migration-as-invasion theory might serve as a pretext for claiming vast presidential powers and upending constitutional norms.

Circumstances in which people are feeling extreme disorientation are potent breeding grounds for people who are willing to exploit it in moments of crisis.

For all of its faults and weaknesses, no serious competitor has emerged to capture people’s imagination or seriously challenge it.

Which one was Abraham Lincoln?

“The conflicts of popular factions are the chief, if not the only inlets, of usurpation and Tyranny,” the first president wrote.

Past presidents showed that removing millions of illegal aliens is achievable.

He authored the Constitution to forestall the rise of a despotic president. We’ll soon see if those safeguards suffice.

For centuries, theorists of liberal governance have worried about how emergencies can unfetter executive power. Trump has given those fears new urgency.

Democrats’ cultural aversion to power has cleaved an opening for Trump.

The president is right to release the Kennedy files.

More than 20 years after Bill Clinton left office, Democrats remain in the grips of his New Democrat politics. That’s a serious problem.

Reformers in the Republican Party had been calling for a professional, merit-based civil service since shortly after the Civil War.

To him, the Revolution was “not made but prevented.”

The first time a president withheld funds for something approved by Congress, it led to the Impoundment Control Act. We’ll soon find out if that law has teeth.

The eighth president defined the future of politics.

Presidents can't shutter an agency Congress created by statute. Only Congress has this power.

That’s not how separation of powers works under the U.S. Constitution.

America’s early leaders were worried not only about demagogues like Donald Trump, but about the rise of an antidemocratic, wealthy elite that goads such men on.

Do judges have the power to enforce their rulings if the executive branch refuses to comply?

In a new book, Jeffrey Toobin makes a convincing case that Ford’s pardon of President Nixon set the stage for unchecked presidential power.