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Majority Don’t Know Why We Declared Independence

July 4, 2025 at 12:16 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

A new Morning Consult poll finds 53% of Americans don’t know why the American colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence to separate from Britain on July 4, 1776.

Filed Under: Political History

Room for One More on Mount Rushmore?

June 29, 2025 at 9:06 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

New York Times: “During his first term, Mr. Trump told Kristi Noem — then a U.S. representative from South Dakota, now Mr. Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security — that his “dream” was to be on Mount Rushmore. She later gave Mr. Trump a model of Mount Rushmore with his face on it.”

“The idea has resurfaced since Mr. Trump returned to office. A congresswoman from Florida sponsored a bill in January to ‘direct the Secretary of the Interior to arrange for the carving of the figure of President Donald Trump on Mount Rushmore National Memorial.’ It was referred to the House Committee on Natural Resources, which has yet to act on it.”

Filed Under: Political History

Extra Bonus Quote of the Day

June 27, 2025 at 4:00 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“If you look at the end of the Civil War — the 1800s, it was a very turbulent time. If you take the end day — was it 1869? Or whatever.”

— President Trump, speaking to reporters.

Filed Under: Political History


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Trump Takes a Huge Gamble His Predecessors Avoided

June 22, 2025 at 7:35 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

David Sanger: “For Mr. Trump, the decision to attack the nuclear infrastructure of a hostile nation represents the biggest — and potentially most dangerous — gamble of his second term.”

“He is betting that the United States can repel whatever retaliation Iran’s leadership orders against more than 40,000 American troops spread over bases throughout the region. All are within range of Tehran’s missile fleet, even after eight days of relentless attacks by Israel. And he is betting that he can deter a vastly debilitated Iran from using its familiar techniques — terrorism, hostage-taking and cyberattacks — as a more indirect line of attack to wreak revenge.”

“Most importantly, he is betting that he has destroyed Iran’s chances of ever reconstituting its nuclear program. That is an ambitious goal: Iran has made clear that, if attacked, it would exit the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and take its vast program underground.”

Tom Nichols: President Trump is taking an enormous risk.

Filed Under: Foreign Affairs, Political History

How Trump Treats Black History Differently 

June 21, 2025 at 12:55 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

New York Times: “The president’s decision to snub Juneteenth — a day that has been cherished by generations of Black Americans before it was named a federal holiday in 2021 — is part of a pattern of words and actions by Mr. Trump that minimize, ignore or even erase some of the experiences and history of Black people in the United States.”

“Since taking office in January, he has tried to reframe the country’s past involving racism and discrimination by de-emphasizing that history or at times denying that it happened.”

Filed Under: Political History, Race

Bonus Quote of the Day

June 19, 2025 at 11:42 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“I wonder if—you know, the Civil War, it always seemed to me maybe that could’ve been solved without losing 600,000-plus people.”

— President Trump, speaking to reporters.

Filed Under: Political History

The Last Military Parade in D.C. Was in 1991

June 13, 2025 at 12:00 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“The last time the United States held a national military parade was in June 1991, timed to welcome returning veterans of the 100-day Persian Gulf War,” NPR reports.

ABC News: Democrats slam military parade as Trump’s multimillion-dollar “birthday party.”

Filed Under: Political History

Hegseth Begins New Probe Into Afghanistan Pull Out

May 20, 2025 at 4:48 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a new probe into the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, vowing accountability for what he called the Biden administration’s “disastrous and embarrassing” handling of the events that led to the deaths of 13 US troops, Bloomberg reports.

Filed Under: Political History

Trump Is Literally Attempting to Rewrite History

May 19, 2025 at 8:55 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“For generations, official American documents have been meticulously preserved and protected, from the era of quills and parchment to boxes of paper to the cloud, safeguarding snapshots of the government and the nation for posterity,” the AP reports.

“Now, the Trump administration is scrubbing thousands of government websites of history, legal records and data it finds disagreeable.”

Filed Under: Political History

Lt. Governor Calls Three-Fifths Compromise a ‘Great Move’

April 30, 2025 at 4:05 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith (R) “is facing backlash for sharing a debunked conservative argument that the Three-Fifths Compromise was a step toward ending slavery in response to a discussion surrounding a bill that would eliminate state diversity programs,” the Chicago Tribune reports.

Said Beckwith: “The Three-Fifths Compromise, and many other things like that, were designed to make sure that justice was equal for all people and equality really meant equality for all.”

Filed Under: Political History

Chart of the Day

April 29, 2025 at 11:49 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Filed Under: Political History

More Americans Think Vietnam War Was a Mistake

April 28, 2025 at 10:43 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Fifty years after it ended, a new Emerson College poll finds a plurality of Americans — 44% — think the war in Vietnam was not justified, while 29% think the war was justified.

This is the lowest perceived justification of a war by the U.S. public from World War II to the Iraq War.

Filed Under: Political History

Trump’s Approval Lags Past Presidents

April 23, 2025 at 3:28 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Approaching the 100-day mark, Donald Trump has 40% approval rating, the lowest of any president at this stage in his term going back generations.

Filed Under: Political History, White House

Quote of the Day

April 22, 2025 at 6:49 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“I understand very well why it is wrong to compare Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich to any other movement. It was uniquely evil, full stop. I get it. But there are important lessons from the history of that emergent evil.”

— Former Vice President Al Gore, quoted by Politico.

Filed Under: Political History

Quote of the Day

April 20, 2025 at 12:04 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“We live in a moment when our freedoms are once again under attack from the highest office in the land. We see things that would be familiar to our revolutionary predecessors: the silencing of critics, the disappearing of people from our streets, demands for unquestioning fealty.”

— Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D), quoted by the Boston Globe.

Filed Under: Political History

Trump Releases Files on RFK Assassination

April 18, 2025 at 10:18 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday released more than 10,000 pages of files related to the 1968 assassination of former Senator Robert F. Kennedy, following through on an executive order aimed at declassifying documents over the killings of high-profile Americans,” Bloomberg reports.

Filed Under: Political History

When the President Threatens Democracy

April 17, 2025 at 10:33 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Julian Zelizer: “Back in 1973, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. issued a warning. In his classic book, The Imperial Presidency, Schlesinger confessed that — like many liberals — he had once been too enamored with presidential power, a reverence that took root during Franklin Roosevelt’s era.”

“While he still believed a strong executive was necessary to move the political system forward on critical issues, he had come to see more clearly the dangers the founders had warned against: that without effective checks and balances, too much power concentrated in the presidency could threaten American democracy itself.”

Filed Under: Democracy, Political History

The Roman Way to Trash a Republic

April 17, 2025 at 10:00 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Michelle Berenfeld: “In about 80 years, roughly the same length of time between the end of World War II and now, the Roman Republic was transformed into a dictatorship. If you had told a Roman senator at the beginning of the first century B.C.E. that his grandchildren would willingly hand over governance to a monarch, he would not have believed you. Like the American one, the Roman Republic was founded on the rejection of a king. Rome had a representative government that, though flawed, was based on the rule of law, with freedom of speech and rights to legal recourse for its citizens.”

“The Roman Republic lasted nearly 500 years, about twice as long as Americans have had theirs. As was surely true for the Romans, most Americans can hardly imagine that their system of self-government might break and be replaced by an imperial dynasty. That is why considering what undid the Roman Republic is useful today—if we can learn from the Romans’ mistakes.”

Filed Under: Political History

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About Political Wire

goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.

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