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Even though “the year 2025” sounds like something from the opening titles of an old sci-fi movie, I’m told that it’s actually a real thing. This past year seemed like it was especially brutal for everyone I know. While we all experienced the collective trauma of the return
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As I noted it the earlier installments on this topic, the nominations that President-Elect Donald Trump is making for his second administration have been coming out at a fast and furious rate, and have been flailing a bit as a result. But as I noted in the last piece, only
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As I noted previously, the 2024 Trump transition has been remarkable not just for the breakneck speed of the nominations, but for the reckless choices they’ve made as well. While most incoming administrations would only just now be starting to roll out their first major nominees, Trump has been
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It’s not surprising that the various toadies, lickspittles and henchmen who have attached themselves to the Trump movement are repeatedly insisting that Trump’s re-election win — which is one of the narrowest in presidential history — was actually a staggering landslide that carries with it an enormous mandate. It’s
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Fresh of his election victory, Donald Trump has begun rolling out the Cabinet picks for his next administration. First and foremost, we should note that he’s moving incredibly quickly here. Typically, this process takes a good deal of time, as an incoming administration works through potential names and makes
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As I noted in this piece, I don’t make predictions about elections because that’s not what historians are trained to do and that’s not something I’m comfortable with. But even then I noted that I thought this was leaning Harris’s way and, boy, that was
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This presidential race has been going on for approximately our entire lifetime, but it’s finally the last weekend of the campaign. While I’ve explained that I have my reasons for not making predictions in moments like this, I do think I can offer some encouragement. Not about the
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I know you’re sick of hearing that This Is The Most Important Election of Your Life, but as a scholar who’s devoted his career to studying American political history, I am telling you that No, Seriously, This Is The Most Important Election of Your Life. Despite the incredibly
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As I’ve noted on Bluesky, one of the hazards of being a scholar who works on modern American politics is that when this nation goes through an important presidential campaign, especially one with high stakes, there’s a constant stream of friends, family members and, of course, random people
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Before I dig into my topic today, I wanted to apologize for the relatively light posting the last month. I’d planned on posting more as we hit the homestretch of the presidential campaign, but a recent family tragedy — a swift decline in my mom’s health and then her
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Part of the appeal of Donald Trump’s gauzy promise to “Make America Great Again” is that it’s vague enough to appeal to constituencies who have little more than an unfocused nostalgia for some mythical golden age in the American past. Whenever reporters have tried to pin Trump or
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I’ve always been puzzled by the pundits who worried that Kamala Harris wouldn’t do well in a debate. Again, this is the senator who reduced Brett Kavanaugh to rubble. Yes, her 2020 presidential campaign didn’t pan out, but that was largely because she was running in a