Politics

   
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Poll Watchers and the Long History of Voter Intimidation

President Trump has called on supporters, including law enforcement officers, to monitor election sites. Voter intimidation tactics have a long history.
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Enemies of the People: Trump and the Political Press (Media Mistakes Excerpt)

Top national political reporters admit mistakes in their reporting on the 2016 election campaign.
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Enemies of the People: Trump and the Political Press (CNN's Missteps Excerpt)

CEO Jeff Zucker acknowledges missteps in CNN’s 2016 campaign coverage, when many media outlets covered Donald Trump’s campaign as a spectacle that produced higher ratings.
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Enemies of the People: Trump and the Political Press (False Equivalency Excerpt)

A look at how the journalistic instinct for “balanced” reporting on Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016 played out in particular when it came to the Clinton email investigation.
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Bush v. Gore: How a Recount Dispute Affects Voting Today

The dramatic controversy surrounding the 2000 presidential election led to sweeping voting reforms, but opened the door to a new set of problems that continue to affect elections today.
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Enemies of the People: Trump and the Political Press (Historical Excerpt)

Tensions between the press and presidents, charges of liberal media bias and the decline in public trust in journalism has been in existence for decades.
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Political Debates: What the Unforgettable Moments Reveal

High-stakes debates put candidates in the hot seat. But are they helpful to voters?
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How Black Women Fought Racism and Sexism for the Right to Vote

African American women played a significant and sometimes overlooked role in the struggle to gain the vote.
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What the Bungled Response to HIV Can Teach Us About Dealing With Covid-19

Politics, public health and a pandemic. What we didn’t learn from HIV.
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How Biden vs. Sanders Echoes a 1964 Republican Party Split

Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are the icons of an ideological split among today’s Democrats, echoing a similar split in the Republican party of 1964.
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How Oscar Speeches Became So Political

Oscar night, long a showcase for Hollywood glamour, has also become a platform for film stars to pitch a rainbow of political causes.
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Political Memes: The Rise of the Political Meme in Politics Today

As campaign season heats up, political memes are being deployed to share opinions. They are today's editorial cartoons.
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Impeached: How Presidents Handled it -- Trump vs. Clinton.

How can a president continue to govern with an impeachment trial looming? President Clinton and President Trump adopted very different strategies.
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"No" on Impeachment Unites Today's GOP. In the 1950s, a Renegade Dared to Break Ranks

Breaking with party unity can be costly. In the 1950's, Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine faced backlash after she condemned Joseph McCarthy, a fellow Republican.
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Do Whistleblower Protections Work? Ask This One.

A case from almost a decade ago reveals the peril faced by whistleblowers seeking to expose wrongdoing.
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Echoes of Nixon in Trump's War on Press

President Trump’s efforts to clamp down on White House leaks have echoes of a pattern set during the Nixon era.
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Israel Survived an Early Challenge With War Planes Smuggled by U.S. Vets

In 1948, World War II aviators risked their lives in a secret operation to smuggle weapons and planes to the Israeli military.
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How Segregation Influenced Evangelical Political Activism

While abortion is often cited as the motivation behind evangelical Christians becoming politically active in the 1970s, there's another little-known reason that involves the IRS and segregated schools.
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The Roots of Evangelicals’ Political Fervor

White evangelical Christians are among President Trump’s most important supporters. But more than 40 years ago, they were on the margins of American politics.
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How Supreme Court Confirmations Became So Bitter: From Bork To Kavanaugh

Will Brett Kavanaugh answer any questions? He may not -- and it all goes back to the bitter hearings over Judge Robert Bork, which forever changed how nominees answer questions.
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Gerrymandering's Surprising History and Uncertain Future

Both political parties have always played the redistricting game. But some of today’s battles have roots in a civil rights case decided by the Supreme Court 30 years ago.
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She Derailed the Fight for Equal Rights for Women

Even in the #MeToo era, many people don't know that the Equal Rights Amendment never passed...because of one woman -- which is why it's a big deal that Illinois recently passed the amendment.
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Iran, North Korea, Russia: How the Nuclear Threat Re-emerged

Despite President Trump's summit with Kim Jong Un, new reports suggest North Korea is pushing ahead with its nuclear program. The U.S. and Russia are also expanding their nuclear arsenals... so how is it that the public seems so complacent about the risk of nuclear catastrophe?
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Why We Can't Have a Civil Conversation About Guns

In the 1980s, the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan and the shooting of his press secretary, Jim Brady, led to the Brady Bill. Decades later, are there lessons from that fight for the Parkland students?
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Us vs. Them: from George Wallace to Donald Trump

Trump has used populist politics to appeal to voters who are fed up with the status quo. We look at another politician who tapped into America’s divisions decades ago: George Wallace.
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The Populist Politician and California's Property Tax Revolt

In 1978, voters passed Proposition 13, lowering taxes for millions of California homeowners. Decades later, what has it meant for California?
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Fair Housing

Has the government done enough to stop housing discrimination?
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Upheaval at the 1860 Democratic Convention: What Happend When a Party Split

Some issues are too fundamental for a party to withstand, and the consequences can last for a generation.
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Lessons from the 2004 Democratic Convention: Obama's Speech

Sometimes the most important speech at the convention isn't delivered by the nominee.
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Lessons from the 1924 Democratic Convention: An Immigration Debate's Impact

Immigration has been a defining issue in a campaign before, and the consequences transformed the Democratic Party.
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Lessons from the 1912 Republican Convention: Birth of the Modern Primary

The animosity between William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt changed the primary process forever.
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How It Started (1831): Conventional Wisdom

In 1831, a radical third party had a new idea for selecting a presidential candidate, and it’s still in use today: the national nominating convention.
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Lessons From the 1964 Republican Convention: Declaring War on the Establishment

Donald Trump's candidacy wasn't the first time the Republican Party was split by an outsider declaring war on the establishment elite.
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Lessons from the 1968 Democratic Convention: Under the Shadow of Protests

There are important lessons to be learned from the Democrats' 1968 Chicago convention.
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Lessons from the 1976 Republican Convention: Why Ronald Reagan Lost the Nomination|

In 1976, Ronald Reagan found owning the soul of a party isn't the same as taking home its nomination.
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Smoking Man: Political Ads That Changed the Game

In the 2012 Republican primary, Herman Cain's campaign produced an unusual video featuring Cain's chief of staff, Mark Block, giving a pep talk while smoking a cigarette.
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The Rock: Ads That Changed the Game

In 2007, long-shot Democratic candidate Mike Gravel released one of the strangest ads in political history.
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Willie Horton: Ads That Changed the Game

The infamous Willie Horton ad placed a nail in the coffin of Michael Dukakis' 1988 presidential run.
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Morning in America: Political Ads That Changed the Game

Future "warm and fuzzy" ads can trace their lineage to this one. For his reelection campaign, Ronald Reagan employed a team of advertising all-stars, resulting in one of the most famous catchphrases in American politics.
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It's 3:00 am: Political Ads That Changed the Game

After a string of critical losses in the 2008 Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton's campaign put out a hard-hitting ad that questioned Barack Obama's readiness for the White House.
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Daisy: Political Ads That Changed the Game

Perhaps the most famous political ad of all time, this early television spot ran on air just once, but generated enough media coverage to become a real factor in the 1964 presidential election.
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Hillary Clinton and the Superpredator

Wondering what the Hillary Clinton/superpredator brouhaha is all about? Here's the cliff notes...
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Being in the Bubble

The curious origin of a political metaphor.
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Campaign Finance from Watergate, to Soft Money and Citizens United

The Watergate campaign finance scandals led to a landmark law designed to limit the influence of money in politics. Forty years later, some say the scandal isn’t what’s illegal, it’s what’s legal.