This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: The Hill
Dec 2, 2020
The proposal would eliminate a loophole written into the 13th Amendment that allows involuntary servitude to be imposed on persons convicted of a crime. Some recent scholars have argued that this exemption is a foundation of the current system of mass incarceration.
Source: Washington Post
Dec 1, 2020
"Since 1937, Election Day and Inauguration Day have been about 75 days apart — not much time to set up a new administration, but plenty of time for things to go wrong."
Source: University of Virginia
Dec 1, 2020
by Marc Selverstone
Taped recordings from the Lyndon Johnson White House reveal the conflict between LBJ and Richard Nixon over the degree to which a president-elect could expect to influence policy before being inaugurated.
Source: New York Times
Dec 1, 2020
Previously resistant descendants of Warren G. Harding had denied proof based on commercial DNA testing that plaintiff James Blaesing was Harding's grandson. With exhumation looming, they conceded that Blaesing was a descendant of Harding and mistress Nan Britton.
Source: American Historical Association
Dec 1, 2020
The AHA is party to a lawsuit pressing the Trump administration and the National Archives to comply with laws requiring complete preservation of presidential records.
Source: The Guardian
Nov 30, 2020
A plan to tunnel underneath the site of Stonehenge to expand a British highway is controversial and reflects different understandings of preservation.
Source: New York Times
Nov 30, 2020
Journalist and photographer Richard Frishman examines traces of segregation and racial exclusion in the built environment of the US.
Source: New York Times
Nov 30, 2020
As the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region enters a cease-fire, what are the prospects for protecting sites of cultural and historical significance from destruction as acts of reprisal? History suggests it's possible, though difficult.
Source: Washington Post
Nov 30, 2020
Tourism to San Francisco has fallen by half since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, and tourist spending has declined even further, impacting many of Chinatown's businesses as well as its social life.
Source: The New Yorker
Nov 30, 2020
by Adam Gopnik
"Generally, in Mob stories, the cute bits are not real, and the real bits are not cute. Given that grim truth, there’s something to be said for just shutting your eyes and repeating the cute bits." Some new books on the Mafia unfortunately follow the pattern.
Source: FiveThirtyEight
Nov 30, 2020
by Julia Azari
In earlier eras, one-term presidencies were more the rule than the exception, but Donald Trump is a rarity among modern presidents in losing his bid for reelection. A scholar of the presidency examines the shift.
Source: Associated Press
Nov 30, 2020
A Hungarian culture minister suggested that the Hungarian-American Jewish financier's advocacy of stronger democratic standards in the EU--which reflect criticism of right-wing governments in Poland and Hungary--are similar to the crimes committed against the two nations by Nazi Germany, among other attacks.
Source: New York Times
Nov 30, 2020
Irish Immigrant Maeve Higgins looks at the expanded civics test for naturalization, and gives it a failing grade--unless its purpose is to reduce immigration.
Source: CBS News
Nov 29, 2020
"The Clotilda was burned and sunk in an Alabama River after bringing 110 imprisoned people across the Atlantic in 1860. Two years ago, its remains were found."
Source: New York Times
Nov 29, 2020
by Steve Inskeep
NPR's Steve Inskeep reflects on the prospect that historical distance will make Trump and Trumpism smaller (and not all-consuming) parts of a story about American society struggling with bigger questions of political, economic and social equality that became increasingly contentious during the Obama era.
Source: The New Yorker
Nov 29, 2020
New Yorker editor David Remnick writes that while Trump is not the first president to battle the media, his apparent belief that the press exists as his public relations agency--and anger that it doesn't work that way--are leading him to attack a fundamental institution of society with deadly consequences.
Source: Washington Post
Nov 29, 2020
by Gillian Brockell
Harrison Ruffin Tyler, at age 91, is a rare example of a person whose life and family history connect the present to the era of the early republic in two generations.
Source: WGBH
Nov 27, 2020
An interdisciplinary panel of scholars discusses the contributions of the late MIT urban studies professor Tunney Lee to historic preservation and the relationship of immigrant communities to urban environments.
Source: New York Times
Nov 25, 2020
Explore an immersive, interactive page that shows how "The Death of General Wolfe" by Benjamin West created a heroic myth of the British defeat of the French near Quebec, which helped decide the Seven Years War.
Source: National Security Archive
Nov 24, 2020
The National Security Archive is republishing its trove of declassified documents related to Jonathan Pollard, a US Navy analyst convicted of spying for Israel in the 1980s. Pollard's parole recently ended.
