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History News Network

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Roundup Top 10!


What the Fugitive Slave Act Teaches Us About How States Can Resist Oppressive Federal Power

by Eric Foner

The actions of attorneys general in California and other states have their antecedents in the fight against that draconian law.


Trump plots to keep Palestinians Stateless forever

by Juan Cole

The Trump-Netanyahu Show on Wednesday was par for the course in American and right wing Israeli discourse about the Palestinians.


The Most Patriotic Act of Treason in American History?

by Gil Troy

As President Nixon’s list of enemies grew long and his grip on reality fragile, one prominent member of his government prepared the military to commit treason.


All the protests and legal fights won’t keep Trump from winning again

by Julian Zelizer

His opponents probably should not start uncorking the champagne bottles just yet.


The True History of Fake News

by Robert Darnton

The concoction of alternative facts is hardly rare, and the equivalent of today’s poisonous, bite-size texts and tweets can be found in most periods of history, going back to the ancients.


Today’s Banned Immigrants Are No Different From Our Immigrant Ancestors

by Tyler Anbinder

An unsentimental look at the history of American immigrants shows that the banned immigrants are not fundamentally different from Americans’ foreign-born grandparents, great-grandparents, or even great-great-great-grandparents.


Beware a Trump Reichstag Fire

by Robert S. McElvaine

"Ever since the election, I have been concerned about and warning others of the possibility of Donald Trump using a terrorist attack in the United States the way Adolf Hitler used the burning of the Reichstag (parliament) building in Berlin in 1933 as a pretext to seize authoritarian power and destroy our Constitutional system."


Silencing Elizabeth Warren: Gag rules have a long, dark history

by Manisha Sinha

When Sen. Mitch McConnell declared of Sen. Elizabeth Warren that "she was warned" and yet "she persisted," he sounded like a throwback to a time when conservatives sought to silence abolitionist women like the Grimke sisters, and before them the black woman abolitionist Maria Stewart, who dared to speak out against slavery.


California Goes Confederate

by Victor Davis Hanson

Threatening secession is far from the only thing that the Golden State has in common with the Old South.


How to Radicalize a Peaceful Minority

by Benjamin W. Goossen

There is no better way to turn a religious minority against a nation than by maligning, detaining, and excluding them.