Author: Heather Cox Richardson

Racecraft: America’s demographic shift and why the census artificially divides people by skin color

Racecraft: America’s demographic shift and why the census artificially divides people by skin color

Posted by | Aug 14, 2021 |

On August 12, the Census Bureau released information about the 2020 census, designed to enable states to start the process of drawing new lines for their congressional districts, a process known as redistricting. Because of that very limited intent for this particular information dump, the picture the material gives is a very specific one. The specificity of that information echoes the political history that in the 1920s began to skew our Congress to give rural white voters disproportionate power. It also reinforces a vision of America divided by race: precisely the vision that former president Trump and his supporters...

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Infrastructure, COVID, and Blame: Where the delusions of Republicans have upended in the face of reality

Infrastructure, COVID, and Blame: Where the delusions of Republicans have upended in the face of reality

Posted by | Aug 11, 2021 |

The U.S. Senate passed the bipartisan $1 trillion “hard” infrastructure package on August 10. Democrats will now turn to the $3.5 trillion bill, a sweeping measure that would modernize the nation’s approach to infrastructure by including human infrastructure as well as the older “hard” projects. It establishes universal pre-kindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds, cuts taxes for families with children, makes community college tuition free for two years, and invests in public universities. It invests in housing, invests in job training, strengthens supply chains, provides green cards to immigrant workers, and protects the borders with new technologies. It expands the...

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The Voting Rights Act: Why Federal legislation was needed in 1965 to enforce the 15th Amendment

The Voting Rights Act: Why Federal legislation was needed in 1965 to enforce the 15th Amendment

Posted by | Aug 10, 2021 |

Fifty-six years ago, on August 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. The need for the law was explained in its full title: “An Act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution, and for other purposes.” In the wake of the Civil War, Americans tried to create a new nation in which the law treated Black men and White men as equals. In 1865, they ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing enslavement except as punishment for crimes. In 1868, they adjusted the Constitution again, guaranteeing that anyone born or naturalized in the...

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Police officers deliver emotional testimony about the day Trump sent domestic terrorists to attempt a coup

Police officers deliver emotional testimony about the day Trump sent domestic terrorists to attempt a coup

Posted by | Jul 28, 2021 |

In early July, the Bullock Texas State History Museum cancelled a book event three and a half hours before it was supposed to start. After Representatives Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Liz Cheney (R-WY) opened the hearing, Sergeant Aquilino Gonell and and Officer Harry Dunn of the Capitol Police, and Officer Michael Fanone and Officer Daniel Hodges of the Metropolitan Police, recounted hand-to-hand combat against rioters who were looking to stop the election of Democrat Joe Biden and kill elected officials whom they thought were standing in the way of Trump’s reelection. They gouged eyes, sprayed chemicals, shouted the N-word,...

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Why rewriting history matters: We cannot make good decisions for the future with inaccurate knowledge

Why rewriting history matters: We cannot make good decisions for the future with inaccurate knowledge

Posted by | Jul 26, 2021

In early July, the Bullock Texas State History Museum cancelled a book event three and a half hours before it was supposed to start. Written by journalists Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford, the book was titled Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. According to historian H. W. Brands, who reviewed the book for the Washington Post, it both introduced the story of the Alamo to readers unfamiliar with it and explained how the story has been interpreted since the 1836 battle occurred, using the ways in which British musicians Phil Collins and...

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We the People? Why Republicans believe that “the government has no role in protecting the population”

We the People? Why Republicans believe that “the government has no role in protecting the population”

Posted by | Jul 24, 2021 |

On July 20, the Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends personality Steve Doocy told viewers to get the coronavirus vaccine because it would “save your life” and noted that 99% of the people now dying from COVID-19 are unvaccinated. Brian Kilmeade answered that not getting the vaccine is a personal choice and that the government has no role in protecting the population. “That’s not their job. It’s not their job to protect anybody,” he said. It is, of course, literally the job of the government to protect us. The preamble to the Constitution reads: “We the People of the...

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Knezelism of the Week