Since Tyre Nichols’ death there are renewed calls for Congress to pass police reform legislation. But the federal government has almost no control over state and local police departments.
Rep. Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, speaks to the press at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on May 12, 2021.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
John M. Murphy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Rep. Liz Cheney may have been exiled from her party’s leadership, but she’s after a bigger thing: the restoration of politically conservative values in the GOP and its voters.
Political pressure is focusing on the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images
The US Census Bureau has announced which states will gain and lose representation in Congress as a result of the 2020 census. Here’s how it makes the calculations.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and fellow Democrats address reporters on H.R. 1 at the Capitol in Washington on March 3, 2021.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photos
As GOP-run statehouses across the country tighten voting restrictions, a bill in Congress would, its Democratic sponsors say, undo more than 15 years of moves to make voting harder.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, standing at center and facing left just above the eagle, takes the presidential oath of office for the third time in 1941.
FDR Presidential Library and Museum via Flickr
Conservative justices are redefining religious freedom to mean the protection of individuals or groups to practice their faith as they see fit, argues a constitutional law expert.
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, launches a filibuster in 2016.
Senate Television via AP
The US system was designed with more checks and balances than many other successful democracies – the filibuster’s main function is to give undue power to a vocal minority.
Legal rally of the National Socialist Movement, one of the major neo-Nazi groups in the United States, on April 21, 2018, in Draketown, Georgia.
Spencer Platt/AFP
The First Amendment to the US Constitution protects Americans’ freedom of speech, so much so that even the most hateful speech has the right to be quoted.
The impeachment trial shows American democracy is in bad shape.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The vote to acquit former President Trump for inciting the attack on the Capitol is a symptom of the dramatic decline of the US constitutional system, which is being eroded from within.
The impeachment trial of Warren Hastings in 1788.
Library of Congress
In the early 19th century, the British – who had invented impeachment centuries before – decided it no longer served its purpose. Instead, they found a more effective way to handle a bad leader.
Members of the U.S. Supreme Court visit President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House in 1934.
AP Photo
There are a lot of questions about the point of putting on trial someone who is no longer in office.
The three branches of U.S. government often find themselves in tension.
White House, Eric Kiser; Capitol, John Xavier; Supreme Court, Architect of the Capitol
When presidents have tried to address pressing issues through executive action, members of Congress are quick to ask the courts to step in.
If the Senate acquits former President Donald Trump in the upcoming impeachment trial, there’s an obscure other way to punish him.
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Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was first used against Confederate leaders after the Civil War to expel seditionist politicians. Now it could be used against Donald Trump.
Armed demonstrators attend a rally in front of the Michigan Capitol in Lansing to protest the governor’s stay-at-home order on May 14, 2020.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
Everyone’s saying it: ‘Democracy is fragile’ in the United States. But a political science scholar says that has always been the case.
Modern presidents, including Trump and Obama, have issued far fewer executive orders than their predecessors before World War II.
Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
The vice president may be second in line for the most powerful job in the nation, but there isn’t necessarily a lot to do besides wait – unless the president wants another adviser.
A 1975 stamp printed in St. Vincent shows U.S. presidents George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who were all vocally pro-inoculation and vaccination.
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