"Blame Gerald Ford"

"Over the past few weeks, Donald Trump has exposed the flimsiness of American institutions. Pressure-tested by his audacious assault on the civil services, those institutions instantly folded. But when a bridge tumbles into a river, the rivets and bolts don’t suddenly fail. They erode over generations. This is what happened in Washington: The unfettered power of the president kept expanding, Congress entered a state of sclerosis, the parties became apologists for their leaders, and courts fell into the hands of ideologues."

Franklin Foer at The Atlantic writes that the "road to Trump begins, in some moral sense, with the absolution of Nixon."

"That Retreat Is Shortsighted and, Ultimately, Dangerous"

"Free speech as a value has historically been the domain of the American left: In the 1950s, its archenemy was Republican senator Joseph McCarthy; Black civil-rights leaders saw it as essential to the success of their movement; and in 1988, Republican presidential candidate George H.W. Bush tarred his Democratic opponent, Michael Dukakis, as a 'card-carrying member of the ACLU.' But over the past ten years, Donald Trump and other right-wing provocateurs have co-opted free-speech values to advance an agenda often at odds with liberalism and social justice (see Elon Musk's X), while Democrats, progressives, and, arguably, the ACLU have retreated from the ideal that free speech needs to be protected regardless of the viewpoint being expressed."

Jordan Heller at New York discusses if "there is truth in the depiction of the ACLU of the Trump era as prioritizing social-justice work over the viewpoint-neutral defense of civil liberties."

"How Did Trump Get Away With It When Nixon Didn't?"

"Trump also bent administration rules to obtain a top security clearance for his son-in-law, who served as his unofficial secretary of state and went on to negotiate for himself a highly unusual $2 billion investment deal with Saudi state funds just months after the administration ended. Any one of these incidents would have been an administration-shaking event in the 1970s or '80s, even in the '90s or early 2000s. The old rules were sloughed off in the 2010s, and by the 2020s were barely remembered."

David Frum at The Atlantic marks the 50th anniversary of Richard Nixon's resignation.

"It's Now Up to the People to Save the Constitution From the Supreme Court"

"No officer of the United States, including the President and the Vice President, or a Senator or Representative in Congress, shall be immune from criminal prosecution for any violation of otherwise valid Federal law, nor for any violation of State law unless the alleged criminal act was authorized by valid Federal law, on the sole ground that their alleged criminal act was within the conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority of their office or related to their official duties."

Kim Wehle at The Bulwark writes about "a constitutional amendment that would override the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. U.S. "  

"This Is What Justice Looks Like"

"But whatever comes next, people who are committed to the rule of law should be satisfied that while we may not get the outcome we prefer, or think is correct, the system worked as designed."

At The Bulwark, Jonathan V. Last reacts to Donald Trump's fraud trial in New York.

And he reacts to the verdict.

"When the Public Distrusts Police Officers, Criminal Defendants Benefit"

"Whatever one thinks about Simpson's guilt or innocence in the double murder, it's easy to understand why jurors in the case would have questions—even doubts—about a case investigated by officers whose colleagues had beaten Rodney King and by a detective whose racism was something he bragged about. The LAPD had forfeited its presumption of honesty."

Jim Newton at the Los Angeles Times discusses the most significant aspect of O.J. Simpson's trial during the 1990s.

"Far More Favorable Political Terrain Than They Have Had to Grapple With in the Past"

"As the argument shifts to class-based affirmative action, it is Republicans who will be on the defensive. A GOP that has gleefully exploited the unpopularity of racial preferences for its own political gain will watch as that issue fades into the background. Republicans will be torn between their instinct not to spend money on financial aid and the reality that if they strongly oppose class-based affirmative action their effort to win working-class white and Hispanic voters could falter."

Richard D. Kahlenberg at The Liberal Patriot advises Democrats about the potential end of affrimative action.

Ruy Teixeira also adds his opinion

And Stephen Handel and Eileen Strempel at the Los Angeles Times promote transfer students from community colleges.

"The Reconstruction Constitution—One Very Different from the Constitution of 1787"

"In 1776, revolutionaries destroyed their old colonial governments. New constitutions called new states into being. In 1787, those new states ratified a new federal constitution and made a new nation. In 1867, revolutionaries again destroyed existing governments, and again new constitutions brought new states to life. Those new states ratified a new constitution, remaking America. The Reconstruction Act of March 2 started that process, and we owe more to it than to the Declaration of 1776."

At the Los Angeles Times, Kermit Roosevelt III argues that "March 2 is the true birthday of modern America."

"Eternal Exposure Is the Price of Enlightenment"

"And then there's the ever-present question conveniently ignored by anti-free-speech academics: Who is on the committee that decides what new speech restrictions to impose and how to define them? Do we trust the same Republican state legislatures or local school boards that are already banning books and prohibiting the teaching of The 1619 Project and critical race theory? It's one thing to write law review articles and books urging new limitations on offensive and hateful speech. It's a far different matter to empower government authorities at federal, state, and local levels, with civil, criminal, and administrative enforcement powers, or college administrators (with or without faculty input) with the power to grant, deny, or revoke tenure, to decide what ideas can be spoken, written, or taught."

Stephen Rohde at the Los Angeles Review of Books reviews Robert Corn-Revere's The Mind of the Censor and the Eye of the Beholder.

"What Happened on Jan. 6 Is Far Less Significant Than What Happened Before Jan. 6—and What Has and Has Not Happened Since Then"

"As we approach the one-year anniversary of the violent assault on the Capitol, the prevailing argument on the left and much of the center is that the Republican Party poses a novel threat to American democracy. This is a flawed assessment, which oversells and understates the danger we face."

Corey Robin at Politico issues warnings about minority rule.

"The Most Popular, Most Robust and Most Influential Global Social Movement of the Day"

"[F]rom its very inception, the movement wasn't about sin-obsessed puritans, but rather a backlash against 'the most predatory and dangerous of all big businesses,' in which unregulated liquor traffickers hooked their customers on a highly addictive substance, just like Big Pharma stoking the opioid crisis. In both cases, every market incentive drives the industry to maximize private profit by flooding the community with wares that destroy the public welfare. In penning his famous Six Sermons on Intemperance—which jumpstarted the modern temperance movement in 1826—Boston preacher Lyman Beecher repeatedly used but one Bible verse: 'Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunk also' (Habakkuk 2:15). Temperance activists aimed not at the drink or the drunkard, but the predatory drink seller, to be confronted through a consumer boycott."

Mark Lawrence Schrad at Politico reconsiders the Prohibitionists.

"'Freedom of Choice,' Blazoned by Realtors on L.A. Freeway Billboards Half a Century Ago, Divides America Today"

"White Californians overwhelmingly voted for the Realtors' proposition in November 1964, on the same ballot that Lyndon Johnson crushed Goldwater in the presidential race. The victory was so sweeping that even after Proposition 14 was ruled unconstitutional, Reagan adopted the Realtors' message as his own. The Realtors' use of the libertarian language of individual freedom to maintain social conformity has unified conservatives ever since."

Gene Slater at the Los Angeles Times writes that "[o]nly strong government action could have overcome the Realtors' legacy of racially exclusive suburbs and organized prejudice."

"Making This Promise Real Has Been the Work of Generations"

"The new birth of freedom that Abraham Lincoln extolled in the Gettysburg Address required the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, which amounted to a second founding. It was this second founding that made the first founding worthy of being saved. Much like the founders before them, those who ushered in a second founding learned from experience, working to improve an imperfect Constitution.  At Gettysburg, Lincoln cast the nation as 'conceived in liberty' and 'dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal.' Lincoln's effort was to complete the 'unfinished work' of the founding generation. If Lincoln cast this 'unfinished work' as an effort to restore America to its foundations, to a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, this was an effort to return to something real, but that never actually existed—only the promise of it did."

George Thomas at The Bulwark discusses "America's Imperfect Founding."

Great Dissenters

"That is certainly true in the case of the Harlans, as well. But what emerged from the parsing and assessing was something unexpected. It was not a story about roots or bloodlines. Nor was it fundamentally about exploitation, the pain of inequality, or even the way slavery perverted basic emotions; it was about how, despite all of those things, a feeling grew up between Robert and John Harlan that was authentic and organically human: respect."

Politico runs an excerpt from Peter S. Canellos's The Great Dissenter: The Story of John Marshall Harlan, America's Judicial Hero.

"More Worried About Armed Blacks Than British Redcoats"

"It's because of several things. The emphasis on the Second Amendment has been crafted as a well-regulated militia in terms of (opposing) a tyrannical government or stopping a foreign invasion, and the individual right to bear arms. That's the way it's been cast in the legal debates. That's driven our historical debates. We've got a weird bifurcation in the scholarship between the history of slavery and the history of the Second Amendment. What I'm doing is saying these things are all happening at the same time."

John Blake at CNN interviews Carol Anderson about her new book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America.

"We Are Still Catching Up to Him"

"Ultimately, however, these horrific murders and Johnson's blatant racism strengthened Stevens's hand, for they showed that nothing less than full and thorough revolution in the South would prevent that status quo antebellum from taking hold again. By 1867, when some Republicans had already started to lose interest in the whole project, Stevens told them pointedly that 'radicalism is the only thing now that will save and rescue us.' Levine charts the pivotal role Stevens played in helping to draft and pass the 14th Amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Military Reconstruction Act of 1867, and other important measures of early Reconstruction. The novelty and import of these measures can hardly be overstated. As Eric Foner showed in his recent book The Second Founding, they were the first to give the federal government new powers—to protect the rights and liberties of its citizens—rather than take them away."

Richard Kreitner at The Baffler reviews Bruce Levine's Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice.

"A World That No Longer Exists"

"Puzzling, that is, until you realize that—like so many other institutions whose worthy missions we naively assumed to be inviolable—the ACLU is no longer itself. The organization known as the ACLU is now led by people beholden to an ideology purporting that the essential function of the Constitution has been to serve as a blueprint for white supremacy, and that its broad free-speech protections are not a tool of emancipation for society's underdogs but rather the handmaiden of their oppression."

James Kirchick at Tablet explores "[t]he Disintegration of the ACLU."

"The Grossest and Gravest Abuse of Power by a President in All of American History"

"Trump is stained in history, even if acquitted. And every senator who votes to acquit will also be stained in history. And other vehicles, including applying the 14th Amendment to disqualify Trump from future office and censure, remain. As do criminal charges. The failure to move forward with this process would have been dereliction of duty by Congress."

Politico talks with Norman Ornstein and other in reaction to Donald Trump's second impeachment trial.

And Jim Swift at The Bulwark writes that Republicans have "failed the American people."

"An Uncomfortable Familiarity"

"'Weirdly, part of this is that with partisan gerrymandering, a lot of members of the House do not fear losing reelection—they're afraid of losing primaries,' Eric Foner, professor emeritus of history at Columbia University and an expert in Reconstruction and the Civil War, told TPM. 'With all these Republicans loaded into their districts, they figure they'll always win so there's no benefit to them to take a reasonable stance before primary season.'"

Kate Riga at Talking Points Memo talks to historians about the Republican Party's embrace of violence

Casey Michel at Politico discusses how President U.S. Grant can provide lessons for President Joe Biden now that "the Red Shirts of South Carolina have been replaced with the Red Hats of MAGA."

And at The Bulwark, Mona Charen writes that "Republicans Make Me Proud I Voted for Biden."

"Engaged in Insurrection or Rebellion Against the Same, or Given Aid or Comfort to the Enemies Thereof"

"'Nobody really had heard about this except people like me, who study this era,' said Foner, a Columbia University professor and author of numerous books on the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Abraham Lincoln. 'And then I had other historians emailing me saying, wouldn't Section Three apply here if Trump is guilty?'"

At The Seattle Times, Michael S. Rosenwald discusses using the Fourteenth Amendment to remove Donald Trump from office.