The People’s Document

It’s safe to say that there hasn’t been a time since the Civil War era when the US Constitution—its meanings, rights, and protections, its checks and balances and violations—was more consequential or contested in our political life. Thanks to the Trump administration, hardly a day goes by when a presidential order, a Justice Department prosecution, or a Homeland Security detention and expulsion doesn’t overstep the bounds or outright ignore constitutional norms and practices. And as we all know, even before Trump was sworn in a second time, there were serious questions about his eligibility for the presidency, given his participation in the January 6, 2021, uprising. Who would have thought that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, determining who might be barred from office for engaging in “insurrection or rebellion” against the United States, would be at the center of a judicial reckoning? Or that birthright citizenship, Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, so foundational to securing and expanding our civil and political rights, would be under concerted attack and now awaiting a Supreme Court ruling demanded by Trump? How the Constitution will be interpreted by a right-wing Supreme Court, and whether its long-accepted rules for the wielding of power remain intact, are questions that now stare us in the face. Read Steven Hahn’s “The Centuries-Long Struggle to Make the Constitution Equal for All”

Crossing the Delaware

Almost a dozen modern and contemporary artists have riffed on Washington Crossing the Delaware, among them Jacob Lawrence, Robert Colescott, Grant Wood, Alex Katz, and Kent Monkman. Some of these artists have drawn on the Crossing’s status as an American icon to make political statements. In 2017, Kara Walker reworked the painting to comment on Trump’s inauguration. Other explorations have tended toward formal reinvention. A young Roy Lichtenstein, before his Pop Art breakthrough, painted two versions in an abstract, naïve style around the same time that Larry Rivers offered a brushy, sketchy reinterpretation, at least partly as a figurative challenge to the hegemony of Abstract Expressionism among New York painters. Each refashioning is both a departure and a return. But what does the changes and continuities in how the American Revolution tell us not only about the past but about today as well? Read Rachel Hunter Himes’s “The Art of the American Revolution Across the Generations”