The American history of presidential misconduct goes all the way back to the nation's beginnings—and few people know it better than James M. Banner Jr. He was part of the team asked in 1974, amid discussion of Richard Nixon's impeachment, to compile a complete history of White House misbehavior.
President Nixon resigned shortly after the report was finished, but Banner recently brought together a new team to update the report through the most recent Administration. This week he wrote for TIME about which parts of that history he thinks are important to remember when considering former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's testimony. Click here to read what he had to say.
Here's more of the history that made news this week:
During the Apollo program, Chris Kraft, who died at the age of 96 on July 22, was NASA's director of flight operations. He later ran the Johnson Space Center in Houston, writes TIME's Jeffrey Kluger
The movement to send free black Americans to Africa was "a very concrete example of telling people who were born in this country that they don't belong here and they have to 'go back,'" says historian Kunal Parker
“They are returning this summer not with bombs or bands, as they have in the past, but quietly and assuredly, like friends of the family. American tourists, who were driven from Europe by the dollar devaluations and the oil embargo of the early 1970s, are finding their way back in force. From Sicily to Skye and Positano to the Parthenon, the accents of Dixie and down East can be heard again in the pubs and bistros and trattorie, in cathedrals, castles, stately homes, museums, opera houses and a million stores." (July 25, 1983)
“In the big world outside, the pitchers are throwing bean balls, and there seems to be little but trouble. But inside the small, noisy world of the Polo Grounds, all is well. The Giants are winning. They are taking ball games at a better than two-to-one clip, and they have battered the second-place Brooklyn Dodgers into a temporary state of slack-jawed apprehension. This week they were on top of the National League with a handsome six-game lead after Sunday's games. If asked to explain this happy state of affairs in one word, the Giant fan is at no loss. The word is ‘Willie.’” (July 26, 1954)
“Ottawa is scarcely less a royal capital than London. Officially George V is styled ‘By the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King.’ He is therefore in fact King of Canada though never addressed as such. In Canada His Majesty is represented by Governor General the Earl of Bessborough. In Ottawa sedate Lord Bessborough sits on the ‘Crown Chair.’ In Rideau Hall he holds a vice-regal reception at which Canadian ladies are ‘presented.’ He flies a symbolic flag with a blue field on which appears a gold crown." (July 25, 1932)
Before the Wall This New York Times video from David Botti uses archival images and footage to tell a compelling story of how the border between the U.S. and Mexico became the flashpoint it is today.
Pacific Standard Peter Dauvergne’s look at the history of the world’s smallest island nation, adapted for the MIT Press Reader, is a fascinating exploration of how centuries of exploration and exploitation created a modern crisis.
Q&A Historian Timothy Naftali writes for CNN about the 10 questions he would have wanted Congress to ask Robert Mueller, and why.
Freeway to Be For CityLab, Linda Poon digs into recent research about how the “freeway revolts”—urban resistance to extending the Interstate Highway system into cities—shaped the American map.
In the Picture This adaptation from Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, presented by Longreads, tells the disturbing story she found while investigating a turn-of-the-century photograph of an unidentified girl.
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