The ratings agency’s decision will have no consequences for the U.S. dollar’s global role, but it highlights the country’s darkening fiscal outlook and governance challenges.

The most popular historical analogy for current American troubles is the Civil War era. The second most popular is the Gilded Age. But where the 1850s do not meaningfully resemble today, the 1890s ce…

American politics turned hyper toxic several years ago, and ever since commentators have raised the specter of a second civil war. No other historical parallel, it seems, captures so viscerally today…

After decades of democratic progress, human rights and the rule of law in Mexico are under siege. It would be a grave error for the United States to believe that its only interests in Mexico are trad…

Many of the supposedly unprecedented features of contemporary politics have familiar echoes in earlier American history, and so the best mirror in which to see our present moment clearly could be our…