Roundup

Trump’s Attacks on Refugees Expose the Inadequacy of the Current System

by Carl J. Bon Tempo

The Refugee Act of 1980 is the law allowing the President to set an annual ceiling for refugee admissions to the United States, and is in urgent need of revision by Congress. 

Coronavirus Can Afflict the Powerful. Yet Food Workers Remain the Most Vulnerable.

by Angela Stuesse

The rollback of workplace protections under a generation of conservative state and federal administrations has made low-wage service workers acutely vulnerable to COVID. 

Teaching the Racism of European Art Head-On

by Letha Ch'ien

"Race and European Art set out to examine our racial history clearly, without sidestepping  the ugly and uncomfortable parts of our heritage. I got lucky, because the students who signed up wanted to do the same work. And boy, was it depressing. I joked that I had become the professor of 'Bum You Out Studies'."

Holding an Election During the Civil War Set the Standard for Us Today

by Jonathan W. White

“We can not have free government without elections,” Lincoln told the crowd, “and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.” 

Fearing a Fear of Germs

by Heather Murray

Will responses to the Coronavirus, like early public health steps taken in response to HIV, foster suspicion and mistrust? 

Roundup Top Ten for October 2, 2020

The top opinion writing by historians from around the web this week. 

A Thousand Times Worse

by William Astore

Some of Donald Trump's more bloodthirsty rhetoric isn't exceptional at all; American culture has long been able to accommodate the idea of mass killing in war, even at incomprehensible scales. 

Lincoln's Approach to a Tough Election Could Teach Trump a Few Things

by Harold Holzer

Abraham Lincoln faced doubtful prospects for reelection and an actual civil war as Election Day approached, but did not resort to challenging the legitimacy of the election as a way to hold on to power. 

On the Peaceful Transfer of Power: Lessons from 1800

by Sara Georgini

Adams lost the presidency amid violent factionalism, a seething press, rampant electioneering, and the eruption of party politics, yet became a champion for the peaceful transfer of power. 

Trump is Afraid of Honest History

by James Grossman

Trump's proposal for a "1776 Commission" suggests that history teachers should be cheerleaders, reducing the nation’s complex past to a simplistic and inaccurate narrative of unique virtue and perpetual progress.

Black Women are Leading the Movement to End Police Violence

by Keisha N. Blain

Throughout the 20th century Black women have led movements in protest of police violence and unequal treatment under law. Today's protests carry on that legacy. 

The Electoral Punt

by Jonathan Wilson

Many people imagine they understand the Framers' intent in creating the Electoral College. They impute more clarity of purpose than they should to a group who essentially made a slapdash compromise in order to be finished with the ordeal of drafting the Constitution. 

The Debate Showed That Treating Trump ‘Fairly’ Only Helps Him Cheat

by Brendan Nyhan

"Will the media accurately describe Trump’s attacks on the election as dangerous and anti-democratic? Or will they run faux-neutral headlines like “Pure chaos on election night” if he says the vote is being stolen and tries to declare victory before all the votes are counted?"

D.C. Statehood Is Good for the Democrats, Good for Democracy

by George Derek Musgrove and Chris Myers Asch

DC statehood will secure the citizenship rights of the city's residents and begin to repair the crisis of legitimacy caused by the gross imbalance of political representation in the U.S. Senate. 

How Trump Brought Home the Endless War

by Stephen Wertheim

The Global War on Terror reconfigured American foreign policy around military force against abstract ideas and indeterminate enemies. The divisions of domestic politics set the stage for Donald Trump to move the war to the streets of the United States. 

Stopping Trump’s Coup

by Jim Sleeper

A phalanx of fomer officials was persuaded by a book to publicly press for abandoning tactical nuclear warfare as a military strategy because of the risk of global annihilation. The prospect of a Trump coup requires living former presidents to close ranks against the prospect of ignoring or challenging the election results. 

The Case to End the Supreme Court as We Know It

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

The Supreme Court has historically supported democratic and egalitarian change only when forced by social movements. People must stop looking to the power invested in the court and start looking for the power latent in themselves. 

If the Republican Party is the Party of Trump, What Does it Stand For?

by Robert L. Tsai and Linda C. McClain

The party’s decision to short-circuit the platform-writing process robbed its own voters of a meaningful opportunity to chart the direction of the party and re-tether a rudderless president to principles.

The Supreme Court Used to be Openly Political. It Traded Partisanship for Power

by Rachel Shelden

Americans once assumed that the constitutionality of a given law was a matter to be settled through legislative politics and elections, and selected judges on a partisan basis. Today's court is no less political or ideological, but can exert more power because of its nominal freedom from partisan politics. 

Correcting the Misinformation about Breonna Taylor

by Radley Balko

The Post's policing expert suggests that the Kentucky Attorney General's statements about the grand jury process in the shooting death of Breonna Taylor by Louisville police officers is part of a broad pattern of misinformation.