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If Donald Trump’s inaugural address can be summed up in two words, “American carnage,” Joe Biden’s might be remembered for three: “Democracy has prevailed.” The new president, speaking from the spot where just two weeks earlier a pro-Trump mob had stormed the US Capitol, promised that the worst was over in a battered, bruised yet resilient Washington. But now, almost five months later the alarm bells are sounding on American democracy again. Even as the coronavirus retreats, the pandemic of Trump’s “big lie” about a stolen election spreads, manifest in Republicans’ blocking of a commission to investigate the insurrection....

By Erika M Bsumek, Associate Professor of History, The University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts and James Sidbury, Professor of History, Rice University The effort by Democrats and Republicans in Congress to find agreement over a federal infrastructure spending bill has hinged on a number of factors, including what “infrastructure” actually is – but the debate ignores a key historical fact. There is widespread public support for public investment in building and repairing roads and bridges, water pipes and public schools – as well as providing more elder care and expanding broadband internet access. All of those...

The Enlightenment was a time of intellectual ferment in the Western world following the Middle Ages. Its ideas gave birth to the modern world. We know the Enlightenment from the names of its most brilliant expositors: Francis Bacon, John Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Adam Smith, and others. We know its ideas as the foundation of our social world: the social contract, the rule of reason, the rule of law, consent of the governed, natural rights, constitutionalism, separation of powers, checks and balances, and others. The Republican agenda is a direct assault on all of that. It literally aims to...

By Asher Rosinger, Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health, Anthropology, and Demography. Director, Water, Health, and Nutrition Laboratory, Penn State Imagine seeing a news report about lead contamination in drinking water in a community that looks like yours. It might make you think twice about whether to drink your tap water or serve it to your kids, especially if you also have experienced tap water problems in the past. In a new study – Examining Recent Trends in the Racial Disparity Gap in Tap Water Consumption: NHANES 2011–2018, my colleagues Anisha Patel, Francesca Weaks and I estimate that approximately 61.4...