The 2020 presidential election will be the first in nearly 40 years conducted without protections from a court order that forbid the GOP from using voter intimidation at the polls.
President Trump stressed law and order on a recent trip to Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
President Trump’s law-and-order campaign rhetoric has been compared to Richard Nixon’s and George Wallace’s similar themes in 1968. But such appeals go much further back, to the US in the early 1800s.
Trump accepts the nomination from the South Lawn of the White House.
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
The Republican National Convention wrapped up with Trump sounding familiar themes but speaking from an unusual location.
Protesters against passage of a bill to expand mail-in voting during a Nevada Republican Party demonstration, August 4, 2020, in Las Vegas.
Ethan Miller/Getty Images
In lawsuits across the country, the GOP and Trump campaign are trying to stop or dramatically curtail mail-in voting. Courts have largely sided with them, threatening massive disenfranchisement.
The pandemic has caused an economic emergency in states and cities.
Viaframe/Getty
The pandemic isn’t just a health disaster. It’s a disaster for cities and states, where the money to run government that normally comes in every year has evaporated. Congress may or may not help.
Despite voter dissatisfaction with the Republican and Democratic parties, they are likely to persist.
Shutterstock/Victor Moussa
Despite the fact that only 38% of Americans say they think the Democratic and Republican parties are doing ‘an adequate job,’ they’re unlikely to disappear.
Republican lawmakers are seen as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) oversees a vote on the second article of impeachment against President Donald Trump in the House of Representatives, Dec. 18, 2019.
Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images
An expert on Watergate says that today’s House Republicans have taken precisely the opposite position than the GOP took in 1974 on the president’s power to withhold documents from Congress.
Carol Miller of West Virginia is the only newly elected Republican woman joining the 116th Congress.
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Democracies survive if political norms and traditions are upheld. So the recent actions of GOP legislators in Wisconsin and other states to hamstring incoming Democrats put democracy at risk.
In this December 2017 photo, U.S. President Donald Trump congratulates Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, while Paul Ryan looks on, during a ceremony at the White House after the final passage of tax overhaul legislation.
(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
The GOP’s handling of sexual assault allegations against prominent GOP figures has led some to conclude that the party does not respect women. But GOP women are sticking with their party.
In Texas, Republicans like Cruz (left) are starting to feel the heat from Democrats.
Cruz: REUTERS/Joshua Roberts; O'Rourke: AP
Chris Edelson, American University School of Public Affairs
Congress is supposed to be a check on presidential power, but party politics has muted Republican criticism of Trump. Restoring balance means making a radical change.
Atty. Gen. Elliot Richardson swears in William D. Ruckelshaus as his deputy. Both men later resigned rather than carry out Nixon’s order to fire the Watergate special prosecutor.
AP/John Duricka
Republicans in Congress today are different than GOP figures who challenged President Nixon during Watergate. GOP leaders now stand in contrast to those who once chose country over loyalty to one man.
Jon McNauhgton’s 2017 painting ‘You Are Not Forgotten.’
Jon McNauhgton
The speaker of the House is the most visible and authoritative spokesperson for the majority party in the House. But their role goes beyond politics to everything from accounting to procurement.
For decades, each party simply used a combination of red, white and blue.
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Managing Director of the McCourtney Institute of Democracy, Associate Research Professor, Political Science, Co-host of Democracy Works Podcast, Penn State