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Jenkinson.field

Clay S. Jenkinson

Editor-at-Large

Clay S. Jenkinson is a historian and humanities scholar based in North Dakota. He is founder of both the Theodore Roosevelt Center and Listening to America.

Clay received a BA from the University of Minnesota, and an MA from Oxford where he was a Rhodes and Danforth Scholar. He is the author of thirteen books, most recently, The Language of Cottonwoods: Essays on the Future of North Dakota. He has appeared in several of Ken Burns’ documentary films.

Clay portrays such historical figures as Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and J. Robert Oppenheimer. He lives and works on the plains of North Dakota. He is the founder of the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University in western North Dakota, dedicated to the digitization of all of Theodore Roosevelt’s Papers.

He can be reached at ltamerica.org.

Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results isn’t the first effort to change the outcome of a close race. In 1800, Thomas Jefferson faced a similar and chaotic post-electoral problem.
Presidential elections, your vote, and the quest for legitimacy. Unlike Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, President-elect Joe Biden appears to have won both the popular vote and the Electoral College.
The peaceful transfer of power is a hallmark of American political life. But troubling talk from Trump, should he lose, has raised concerns and a reason to look back and examine the history of presidential changes.
If Trump’s third Supreme Court nominee is confirmed by the Senate, there is no guarantee she will continue to hold views congenial to the president. But does America still want its justices to be unelected and unaccountable?
David French’s new book, "Divided We Fall," is a warning of what might happen to America as it becomes less united than at any time since the Civil War. But there are concrete steps the country can take to bridge the gulf.
President Trump’s illness from the coronavirus has become immediate news, with the entire country pondering what might happen. But previous presidents who became ill were able to keep their health problems under wraps.
With concerns growing that this year’s election may end up in the hands of the Supreme Court or the House of Representatives, history shows this happened once before in the "dangerous election" of 1800.
Presidential appointments to the highest level of the judicial branch, even during lame-duck sessions, have a long history in American politics, dating back to Thomas Jefferson and John Adams in 1800.
Great nations have shared values, shared aspirations and a shared historical narrative. That does not mean everyone agrees, but there has to be at least a baseline understanding of our national purpose that we can agree on.
Most Americans would prefer not to mix sports and politics. But when NBA players protested by canceling playoff games, they brought the issue of race relations to the forefront better than any politician or protest group.