#the-fifty

#the-fifty

The frame, magnificently ornate and gilded, was intended for royalty and originally surrounded a portrait of British King George II that hung in the college's Nassau Hall.

For a nation whose founding symbols were carefully engineered around the balance of peace and war, that omission is hard to read as accidental. Dropping the olive branch from the dime isn't just a design choice: it's a cultural signal.

Starting next month, the cost of renouncing your U.S. citizenship will go down dramatically - a boon for people already shouldering the burden of paying for a major overseas move. Anyone wishing to formally shed their American citizenship is required to obtain a form called a Certificate of Loss of Nationality, and right now it comes with a whopping $2,350 fee. In April, that fee will drop by 80% to $450.

I didn't know that anything had officially changed walking in there. And then being told that I had to provide a passport that I've never had or a birth certificate that's usually tucked away somewhere safe just to cast my vote - which I've done before - it was frustrating.

The real Führer is always a judge. Out of Führerdom flows judgeship. One who wants to separate the two from each other or puts them in opposition to each other would have the judge be either the leader of the opposition or the tool of the opposition and is trying to unhinge the state with the help of the judiciary.

I didn't feel included in the Latino community. I always felt left out. Las Comadres has since become a national nonprofit organization. De Hoyos Comstock, petite with a warm smile, describes Las Comadres as a 'Latina culture club.' The current political rhetoric, characterized by the most aggressive immigration enforcement in modern history, is forcing many U.S. citizen Latinos to question whether they belong.

A record high of adults—80 percent—believes that Americans are divided on the most important values. National pride, trust in government, and confidence in institutions are near record lows. The Princeton University historian Sean Wilentz says the United States hasn't been this divided since the Civil War. Nearly half of Americans think another civil war is likely in their lifetime.

White genocide' Carl is a right-wing firebrand who played a minor role in the first Trump administration and has more recently gained, depending on your vantage, kudos or notoriety for his theory that Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart, as his book's subtitle puts it. He believes, for example, that a White genocide is underway and endorses the Great Replacement Theory (according to which elites in America and Europe are intentionally encouraging immigration to replace indigenous whites).

Last week- after the Wall Street Journal broke more news about the Trump family's dodgy crypto-business dealings and before the President shared a racist video of the Obamas depicted as dancing apes-the Amazon entrepreneur Jeff Bezos decided that one of his smaller properties, the Washington Post, has proved such a drag on his two-hundred-and-thirty-billion-dollar fortune that prudence required that he obliterate much of its newsroom.

The air feels heavier. And the struggles are changing shape. Beyond my office walls, the world is shifting, and my clients sense the tremors. The things they once trusted, global order, democratic norms, and even their own personal safety, no longer feel solid. They feel brittle, as if one strong wind could bring it all down. And what they're sensing isn't imagined.

U.S. President Donald Trump, with his lust for Greenland and hectoring of Europe, thinks the world is at his mercy,and thatthe U.S. is invincible. He's right on the first point. But he discovered this week that he's wrong about the second one. In Davos at the World Economic Forum, Trump climbed down on his Greenland threats after his actions caused chaos in the markets.

Three of the four things that gave Trump a foothold, in my opinion, were failures in this century (the fourth is the legacy of slavery and the organized political violence that replaced it). The other three, though, are the War on Terror, the financial crisis, and social media. (COVID was the final catalyst, I think; having moved during the height of COVID, I can't express how much worse the US dealt with it than much of the EU.)

The American Civil War (1861-1865) was the pivotal event in United States history and the largest armed conflict in the Western world following the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1815) and prior to the beginning of the First World War (1914). The central cause of the war was the institution of slavery, which had increasingly caused conflict between Southern states, which relied heavily on slave labor for their agrarian economy, and Northern states, which were heavily industrialized and had far less need for slaves.

The death of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother and U.S. citizen who was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis on Wednesday, has the potential to shake the political landscape in ways reminiscent of George Floyd's killing in 2020. The Trump administration initially claimed Good weaponized her vehicle in an act of domestic terrorism, an account that appears to be contradicted by video evidence.

"If you look at the optimism metric for future life, that really came down a lot from 2021 to 2023 and that corresponds really closely with the worst of the inflation crisis," Dan Witters, research director of the Gallup national health and well-being index, told Fortune. "The economic pressures of being able to afford things like food and fuel and gas and healthcare-that really can have a deleterious effect."

Following presidential custom, Trump issued a National Black History Month proclamation on Feb. 3 that maintained "black history is not distinct from American history - rather, the history of Black Americans is an indispensable chapter in our grand American story." Yes, but: Its rhetoric, critics say, stands in tension with the Trump administration's recent actions, raising questions about whether commemoration without context ultimately obscures more than it honors.

A 2024 simulation found US civil war could be triggered by clashes between state and federal law enforcement. US federal immigration raids continue in Minnesota, and the operation has set the stage for a standoff between state officials and the federal government. Governor Tim Walz has readied Minnesota's national guard, while the Pentagon has ordered troops to be on standby. A 2024 University of Pennsylvania simulation warned that similar state-federal standoffs could escalate into broader armed conflict.

From George Washington's first presidential "administration" to Donald Trump's promises to cut taxes "bigly," U.S. presidents have played a big role in shaping the direction of the country, including the words we use to talk about everything from national politics to everyday objects and actions.

Just under half, 45%, of U.S. adults now identify as independents, a new Gallup survey found. That's a substantial shift from 20 years ago, when closer to one-third of Americans said they didn't identify with the Democrats or Republicans. This group appears, increasingly, to be driven by their unhappiness with the party in power, according to Gallup's analysis. That's a dynamic that could be good for Democrats in this year's midterm elections, but doesn't promise lasting loyalty.

The latest Census data also suggest the next phase of U.S. politics will be shaped less by a single national economy than by who benefited from growth and where they live. By the numbers: The U.S. median household income rose to $80,734, the 2020-2024 American Community Survey released Thursday and examined by Axios showed. That's a 4.4% jump from 2015-2019 after inflation.