“Economists have predicted nine out of the last five recessions,” Nobel-winning economist Paul Samuelson famously joked. But recessions do eventually arrive, and when the next one hits, the United States may not be well-positioned to fight back. Instead of building up surpluses that could stimulate the economy in a downturn, the federal government has cut taxes and run up trillion-dollar annual deficits and …

History often blames genocide solely on murderous demagogues and military campaigns. But more often than not, the forces that unleash ethnic cleansing arise slowly and during peacetime, and stem from seemingly everyday interactions in places that are home to diverse peoples. What sorts of exchanges and social conditions unleash genocidal behavior? How do people who long lived together as neighbors …

Massachusetts and Virginia became American states after colonists repelled an imperial power. But the area now known as New Mexico joined the Union when it was conquered by the U.S. Army. The U.S. incorporated the land after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, but its inhabitants weren’t automatically U.S. citizens; their status became the subject of negotiations and controversies over who …

The Mueller report promises to clarify what happened in the 2016 election and its aftermath. But that document may only add to the confusion over a broader question: What does it take to fire an American president? In recent months, critics of Donald Trump have discussed removing the president by impeachment, indictment, and the 25th Amendment. But no president has …

Today, Americans wring their hands about the systematic lying in politics, and media claim to be fighting to uphold the principles of truth and the existence of verifiable facts against unprecedented challenges. But the very idea that ‘fake news’ is a new problem is itself ‘fake news.’ Way back in 1710, Gulliver’s Travels author Jonathan Swift wrote, “Falsehood flies, and …