There is a reason why the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago last week. Here is a nice explainer from National Public Radio: For the first two centuries of U.S. history, outgoing presidents simply took their documents with them […]
presidential history
The Washington Post calls for a criminal investigation into Trump’s role on January 6th
Here is the July 2 editorial: After another week of riveting testimony before the House Jan. 6 committee, it is natural to wonder: How many laws were broken, by whom, and will there be prosecutions? Some argue that former president Donald Trump […]
The GOP is trying to defend the most corrupt president in United States history
Historians will have the last say, but in the meantime here is a taste of Jonathan Chait’s recent piece at New York Magazine: At this point, even with the hearings in progress, it seems safe to rate this as the […]
How the National Archives and Records Administration’s “Notice 2022-15” will impact presidential history
Tim Naftali, the first director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum and a professor at NYU, explains: About a month ago, the National Archives and Records Administration signaled in a notice to Congress that it was effectively renouncing […]
Watch Trump defend his presidency to presidential historians
Watch Princeton historian Julian Zelizer convene a meeting with Trump and other presidential historians to discuss his legacy. (HT to Rick Perlstein for bringing this to my attention). We covered this story here. Trump comes at the 14:00 minute mark. […]
Trump is worried about what historians will say about him
Here is Princeton historian Julian Zelizer at The Atlantic: As an academic historian, I never expected to find myself in a videoconference with Donald Trump. But one afternoon last summer—a day after C-SPAN released a poll of historians who ranked him just […]
Historian Heather Cox Richardson interviews Joe Biden
They talked about Kentanji Brown Jackson, Build Back Better, and American Democracy. Watch: Richardson writes about the experience at her wildly popular Substack page: Every day, people write to me and say they feel helpless to change the direction of […]
The American Historical Association condemns Trump’s violation of the Presidential Records Act
From the AHA website: The American Historical Association condemns in the strongest terms former President Donald J. Trump’s reported extensive and repeated violations of the Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978. The PRA requires that: Through the implementation of records […]
The National Archives confirms that Trump ripped-up presidential documents
After receiving over 700 pages of documents from the National Archives, the House January 6th Committee noticed that some of the papers seemed to have been ripped-up and reconstructed using tape. The National Archives has confirmed that this is indeed […]
Is Biden’s presidency doomed? Some historical perspective.
Princeton’s Julian Zelizer offers some historical context at CNN: Those who are worried should find some solace in the fact that contemporary presidents have been able to come back from difficult moments like these. Challenging first terms don’t inevitably put […]
Allen Guelzo on Noah Feldman on Abraham Lincoln
In November we called your attention to Noah Feldman’s argument about Lincoln and the Constitution in his new book The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery and the Refounding of America. In that book, the Harvard Law professor argues that Lincoln violated […]
Should Joe Biden run again?
Over at The New York Times, Bret Stephens thinks Biden will be too old (86 at the end of his second term) to serve a second term. I really don’t have a strong opinion about this, but I do hope […]
Kamala Harris becomes the first woman in U.S. history to have presidential power
She had it for eighty-five minutes today. Here is the BBC: Ms Harris, 57, was in control for 85 minutes, while Mr Biden was placed under anaesthesia for a routine colonoscopy on Friday. Mr Biden’s doctor released a statement after […]
There is no moral or constitutional equivalence between the presidencies of Joe Biden and Donald Trump
What happens when party loyalty and a cult of personality trumps our loyalty to the checks and balances built into the United States Constitution? We have a Constitutional crisis like the one we are currently experiencing. Here is Robert Kagan […]
The Author’s Corner with Benjamin Wetzel
Benjamin Wetzel is Assistant Professor of History at Taylor University. This interview is based on his new book, Theodore Roosevelt: Preaching from the Bully Pulpit (Oxford University Press, 2021). JF: What led you to write Theodore Roosevelt? BW: In the fall […]
“To charge President Biden with ‘losing’ Afghanistan makes no more sense than tagging President Gerald Ford with ‘losing’ Vietnam”
Historian Andrew Bacevich, in an op-ed at the New York Daily News, writes, “The war in Vietnam was effectively lost well before Ford even took office. The same judgment applies to Biden and Afghanistan.” Here is a more extended taste […]
The C-SPAN presidential rankings are here!
C-SPAN asked scholars to rank the presidents in terms of public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, international relations, administrative skills, relations with Congress, vision, the pursuit of justice, and “performance within the context of the times.” The list […]
“There’s nothing like a near-death experience to serve as a wake-up call.” Unless you’re Donald Trump.
Damian Paletta and Yasmeen Abutaleb are the authors of the forthcoming Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History. In an excerpt published at The Washington Post, we learn that Trump’s case of COVID-19 was […]
Obama the persuader
Ezra Klein says that Obama “puts everything into this project of persuasion, of trying to convince America to do something it has never done before. And he so profoundly succeeds and fails.” Listen here. Here is a taste of the […]
What Obama and Biden thought about Trump’s election
Over at The Atlantic, Caroline Mimbs Nyce interviews Edward-Isaac Dovere, author of the upcoming book Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats’ Campaigns to Defeat Trump. Here is a taste: Initially, President Obama seemed pretty restrained when commenting on the 45th […]