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    Matthew Dallek

    Matthew Dallek

  • Are we at a tipping point on guns?

    Aroused activists helped end slavery and Jim Crow, and they're bringing about big changes in how men treat women at work. Can they do something about school shootings?

  • In the hands of Trump, the past is a political weapon

    White House Chief of Staff John Kelly’s remark that the Civil War should have been averted by "compromise" is in line with how the Trump White House has used history: as a political weapon to energize Trump’s white Southern base.

  • In the clash of American cultures, John Kelly picks his side

    Some military heroes make the transition to civilian office easily; others' military mindset makes them a bad fit for high government office. John Kelly, the four-star Marine general serving as White House chief of staff, showed a disconcerting tendency toward authoritarianism at a press briefing last week.

  • Phoenix was Trump country long before Trump

    Then-Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Fountain Hills, Ariz., March 19, 2016. President Trump is in Phoenix for a campaign-type rally that is expected to draw some of his most fervent fans and bring thousands of anti-Trump protesters into the streets. After all, Phoenix remains the place where Sheriff Joe Arpaio used his badge to harass, intimidate and round up Latinos.

  • Confederate monuments testify to the Union's unfinished victory

    The violence that erupted in Charlottesville, Va., is emblematic of an old American tradition of progressivism followed by racist reaction.

  • How presidents should speak about racist violence: Lessons from history

    Critics are rightly castigating President Trump for issuing a series of vague, opaque statements in the wake of white supremacist-fueled violence that rocked Charlottesville, Va., this weekend. As a candidate and now as president, Trump has established a pattern of refusing to repudiate in clear moral terms the white supremacists who backed his White House run, and their hate-fueled ideology.

  • Jared Kushner and the politics of nepotism

    White House senior adviser Jared Kushner arrives to speak to the media outside the West Wing on July 24, 2017. Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s trusted senior aide and son-in-law, will be questioned Tuesday by the House Intelligence Committee, following his Monday appearance before its Senate counterpart, in the ongoing probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Kushner, a 36-year-old political novice, can justifiably claim to be an “outsider” not steeped in the culture of the nation’s capital.

  • Why it’s so hard to ‘repeal and replace’ Obamacare—or almost anything else

    Republicans keep trying to roll back social welfare programs but seldom succeed. Americans often agree with them in the abstract but like their benefits.

  • Bitter Ga. loss provides backdrop for Democrats to reflect on party’s future

    In the wake of Jon Ossoff’s stinging defeat in the House race in Atlanta’s suburbs last night, the question now is: How do Democrats pick up the pieces? Under this scenario, Democrats would embrace candidates who excoriate the wealthiest “1 percent” and promise to curb income inequality, zero out public college and university tuition and enact single-payer universal health care. There are also Democratic warnings that Ossoff’s tepid handling of President Trump misfired.

  • What to watch for in James Comey’s testimony

    Former FBI Director James Comey's testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday could raise at least four points of contention with lasting consequences for Trump’s presidency.

  • Trump should follow the Bill Clinton scandal playbook

    Trump has an unlikely model for how to survive an existential threat to his presidency: Bill Clinton.

  • Democrat Jon Ossoff leads in Georgia House race — a ripple, or the start of a wave?

    Polls suggest that Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff is within range of getting 50 percent of the vote against a large field of Republicans, winning the seat outright and avoiding a runoff.

  • Five things to listen for in Trump’s big speech

    When Donald Trump steps to the podium before a joint session of Congress tonight, he will deliver his first major presidential address since his inauguration, when he memorably invoked the idea of “American carnage.” He will appear before a Congress and a country that is rife with unease and anxiety. Congress is filled with Republicans concerned about Trump’s penchant for chaotic leadership and Democrats swept up by an organic resistance to a president whom many of them regard as a threat to democracy. “All I can do is speak from the heart and say what I want to do,” Trump told “Fox and Friends” Tuesday morning, adding that he hoped to improve on his “messaging,” which he rated as only a “C or a C-plus” so far.

  • Presidential speechwriters survey the carnage

    The vast majority of inaugural addresses have one thing in common: They are eminently forgettable. From Zachary Taylor’s 1849 invocation that “Happily…, in the performance of my new duties I shall not be without able cooperation,” to William Howard Taft’s bland pledge in 1909 “to give a summary outline of the main policies of the new administration, so far as they can be anticipated,” the oratory of this auspicious day has aspired to lofty ambition, yet typically it has failed to transcend the moment. Donald Trump’s address was brief, forceful, and consistent with his campaign rhetoric.

  • Lessons for the anti-Trump resistance from American history

    A protester carries an upside down American flag in a protest against Donald Trump in New York on Nov. 9. As progressives search for the next step in a world where Republicans will control the White House, both chambers of Congress and the majority of statehouses and governor’s mansions, the nascent anti-Trump resistance movement has been doing civil disobedience outside Trump Tower, pushing for bipartisan congressional investigations into Russian election meddling and itching to expose his Cabinet nominees’ conflicts of interest with the hope of sinking one — or perhaps even two or three — of them. Trump is weighted down by a 43 percent approval rating, making him the least popular newly elected president in the past half century.

  • Race, gender and the legacy Michelle Obama will leave behind

    First lady Michelle Obama has enjoyed an average approval rating of 65 percent during Barack Obama’s two terms. University of Maryland historian Robyn Muncy, author of Relentless Reformer: Josephine Roche and Progressivism in Twentieth-Century America, said “Michelle Obama may be the most effective politician among first ladies since Eleanor Roosevelt.” But, how has she pulled it off? Recall that during the 2008 presidential campaign, the right stereotyped Michelle Obama — who since her husband’s 2004 keynote convention address had been cast into the political maelstrom — as an “angry black woman.” Speaking on Fox News in June of 2008, the right-wing pundit Cal Thomas, in words that prefigured Trump’s rise, captured the perceived threat to white male identity posed by an increasingly diverse electorate and heterogeneous country.