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Jonathan Drake / Reuters American Democracy Can’t Fix Itself
Instead of placing their faith in the resilience of the system, ordinary voters are going to have to step up and restore the constitutional balance of power.
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Kevin Lamarque / Reuters The New Enemies List
Trump’s embrace of one of Richard Nixon’s most notorious moves poses a question: Will voters still hold a president accountable for abusing his power?
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Library of Congress The Press Doesn’t Cause Wars—Presidents Do
Trump’s claim that journalists can incite conflict isn’t borne out by the historical evidence.
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Shannon Stapleton / Reuters Can the Cohen Tapes Bring Down Trump?
In 1973, Nixon was confident the secret White House recordings would help his cause. That’s not how it worked out.
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Jonathan Ernst / Reuters How Conservatives Won the Battle Over the Courts
The right has demonstrated that winning this kind of institutional fight takes years, even decades, and requires a ruthless disposition.
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AP A Template for ‘Incivility’
Today’s protesters are reviving the tactics of the anti-Vietnam War movement of the 1960s and ’70s—with similarly mixed results.
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Jonathan Ernst / Reuters A Century of Feuding Between Presidents and the Press
Years before it began its annual dinner, the White House Correspondents’ Association started as an effort to hold the president accountable to the press—a mission as urgent as ever.
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Yuri Gripas / Reuters The End of the Strong Speaker
Paul Ryan’s departure shows how far Congress has come from the heyday of House leaders who tightly controlled their chamber.
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Bettmann / Getty How Trump Channels the 1970s
The one consistent message coming out of the White House was born in the 1970s: Don’t trust any institution.
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AP What Gun-Control Activists Can Learn From the Civil-Rights Movement
The success of the 1963 March on Washington hinged on a confluence of factors—several of which the student-led March for Our Lives won’t have.
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Luke Sharrett / Reuters Where Is Barack Obama?
The former president’s reticence in the Trump era is only hurting his party.
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Ron Edmonds / AP Why the Russia Investigation Could Be More Like Iran-Contra Than Watergate
Complexity, partisanship, and a strong presidential narrative insulated Ronald Reagan from meeting the same fate as Richard Nixon, and those factors could also protect Donald Trump.
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William Philpott / Reuters Gun Control Is Not Impossible
President Clinton showed that with persistence and leadership, legislative restrictions on firearms are attainable.
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Charles Tasnadi / AP What Trump-Era Democrats Can Learn From LBJ
Lyndon B. Johnson was an effective policymaker but failed to protect his legacy—much in the same way Obama’s is being toppled today.
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Saul Loeb / Pool / Reuters America’s Mirror on the Wall
A year into his presidency, Trump has proven to be a reflection of the nation’s darkest political traditions.
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Yuri Gripas / Reuters Out of Control
Nixon’s excesses prompted Congress to reassert its own powers, but those changes eroded over time. Now, Trump is demonstrating anew all the dangers of unchecked executive authority.
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AP How the Tet Offensive Undermined American Faith in Government
Fifty years ago, the January 1968 battle laid bare the way U.S. leaders had misled the public about the war in Vietnam.
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J. Scott Applewhite / AP Blowing Up the Deficit Is Part of the Plan
Republicans are hoping to use the deficits created by their own tax cuts to slash the social safety net—but they may end up setting the stage for tax hikes instead.
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Charles Tasnadi / AP Will Richard Nixon's Three-Pronged Defense Work for Trump?
As Mueller’s investigation heats up, the president is drawing directly from Nixon’s playbook. This time, it might actually succeed.
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Alex Brandon / AP How Congress Blew Its Chance to Curtail Sexual-Harassment
In the 1990s, Republican majorities made a major push to police misconduct on Capitol Hill—but their sweeping reforms didn’t solve the problem.
