Author: Heather Cox Richardson

In New York City, the United Nations opened its General Assembly on September 23, marking the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations itself. The day began with a General Debate, the meeting in which heads of state and government outline their positions and priorities in an era of changing and complex global challenges. Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres opened the debate, reminding the audience that leaders who had lived through the horrors of World War II had created the organization to prevent another such conflagration by establishing “cooperation over chaos, law over lawlessness, peace...

Donald J. Trump talked to reporters on August 25 as he signed several executive orders in the Oval Office. Trump sat behind the Resolute Desk as he has been doing lately, seeming to put its bulk between him and the reporters. Also, as he has been doing lately, he kept his left hand over the right, seemingly to hide a large bruise. Trump was there to announce an executive order charging Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth with creating “specialized units” in the National Guard that will be “specifically trained and equipped to deal with public order issues,” apparently setting...

Donald J. Trump created a firestorm on August 20 when he said that the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex, located mostly in Washington DC, focuses too much on “how bad slavery was.” But his objection to recognizing the horrors of human enslavement is not simply White supremacy. It is the logical outcome of the political ideology that created MAGA. It is the same ideology that leads him and his loyalists to try to rig the nation’s voting system to create a one-party state. That ideology took shape in the years immediately after the Civil...