U.S. Congress
Jeannette Rankin, first woman elected to U.S. Congress, assumes office
Jeannette Pickering Rankin, the first woman ever elected to Congress, takes her seat in the U.S. Capitol as a representative from Montana. Born on a ranch near Missoula, Montana Territory, in 1880, Rankin was a social worker in the states of Montana and Washington before joining ...read more
The First Black Man Elected to Congress Was Nearly Blocked From Taking His Seat
Hiram Rhodes Revels arrived on Capitol Hill to take his seat as the first Black member of the U.S. Congress in 1870. But first, the Mississippi Republican faced Democrats determined to block him. The Constitution requires senators to hold citizenship for at least nine years, and ...read more
President Andrew Johnson Was Impeached for Firing a Cabinet Member
In the 1860s, a president’s unilateral firing of a cabinet member could become an automatically impeachable offense, thanks to a law intended to restrict presidential powers. In fact, it was a law that almost got a sitting president—Andrew Johnson—booted out of office. The Tenure ...read more
How the Great Compromise and the Electoral College Affects Politics Today
The Great Compromise was forged in a heated dispute during the 1787 Constitutional Convention: States with larger populations wanted congressional representation based on population, while smaller states demanded equal representation. To keep the convention from dissolving into ...read more
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress, housed in three buildings on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., is the research library of the U.S. Congress, and is considered the national library of the United States. It’s also the largest library in the world, with a collection of more than 170 ...read more
How We Got National Monuments
In 1872, Yellowstone became the first U.S. national park, and it earned this status the same way new parks still do today: First Congress passed legislation declaring it a national park, and then the president (at the time, Ulysses S. Grant) signed it into law. But by 1906, the ...read more
Freedom of Speech
Freedom of speech—the right to express opinions without government restraint—is a democratic ideal that dates back to ancient Greece. In the United States, the First Amendment guarantees free speech, though the United States, like all modern democracies, places limits on this ...read more
First Amendment
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the freedom of speech, religion and the press. It also protects the right to peaceful protest and to petition the government. The amendment was adopted in 1791 along with nine other amendments that make up the Bill of ...read more
Second Amendment
The Second Amendment, often referred to as the right to bear arms, is one of 10 amendments that form the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791 by the U.S. Congress. Differing interpretations of the amendment have fueled a long-running debate over gun control legislation and the ...read more
Three Branches of Government
The three branches of the U.S. government are the legislative, executive and judicial branches. According to the doctrine of separation of powers, the U.S. Constitution distributed the power of the federal government among these three branches, and built a system of checks and ...read more
Veto
The veto power of the U.S. president is one way of preventing the legislative branch of the federal government from exercising too much power. The U.S. Constitution gives the president the power to veto, or reject, legislation that has been passed by Congress. What Does Veto ...read more
Legislative Branch
The legislative branch of the federal government, composed primarily of the U.S. Congress, is responsible for making the country’s laws. The members of the two houses of Congress—the House of Representatives and the Senate—are elected by the citizens of the United States. Powers ...read more
How We Got Social Security Numbers
Social Security numbers serve as sort of a national ID for American citizens, but it wasn’t always that way. When economist Edwin Witte helped develop the Social Security Act of 1935, the numbers were solely a way to keep track of the new retirement payment system. Witte and his ...read more
Filibuster
A filibuster is a political strategy in which a senator speaks—or threatens to speak—for hours on end to delay efforts to vote for a bill. The unusual tactic takes advantage of a U.S. Senate rule that says a senator, once recognized on the floor, may speak on an issue without ...read more
House of Representatives
The U.S. House of Representatives is the lower house of Congress and plays a vital role, along with the Senate, in the process of moving proposed legislation to law. The bicameral relationship between the two bodies is vital to the American system of checks and balances that the ...read more
Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the legislative branch of the federal government, with the House of Representatives referred to as the lower house. In the United States, the terms “upper” and “lower” house are not literal; they date back to a time in the 1780s ...read more
Aaron Burr’s Notorious Treason Case
In the summer of 1807, the city of Richmond, Virginia, played host to one of the most remarkable trials in early American history. The case involved several legal luminaries, but its undisputed star was the defendant, 51-year-old Aaron Burr. The New Jersey native had only ...read more
6 Famous Congressional Investigations
1. Delving into an Early Army Disaster On November 4, 1791, some 900 U.S. army troops under the command of Gen. Arthur St. Clair, a Revolutionary War veteran, were killed or wounded in a surprise attack by Native American warriors on the Ohio frontier. The following year, in ...read more
The Strange Saga of the 27th Amendment
There’s nothing particularly extraordinary about the content of the 27th Amendment to the Constitution. In full, it stipulates that, “No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives ...read more
7 Things You May Not Know About Jeannette Rankin
1. She struggled to find her calling. After graduating with a degree in biology from the newly opened University of Montana, located in her hometown of Missoula, Rankin got a job as a schoolteacher. But she quickly grew bored and restless, quitting only to find herself equally ...read more
5 Formerly Enslaved People Turned Statesmen
Blanche K. Bruce The son of an enslaved black woman and her white master, Blanche Bruce grew up a house servant on plantations in Virginia, Mississippi and Missouri. He had a privileged upbringing by slave standards and was permitted to study with a private tutor, but when the ...read more
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords injured in shooting rampage
On January 8, 2011, Gabrielle Giffords, a U.S. congresswoman from Arizona, is critically injured when a man goes on a shooting spree during a constituents meeting held by the congresswoman outside a Tucson-area supermarket. Six people died in the attack and another 13, including ...read more
Bill of Rights passes Congress
The first Congress of the United States approves 12 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and sends them to the states for ratification. The amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, were designed to protect the basic rights of U.S. citizens, guaranteeing the freedom of speech, ...read more
Sex scandal leads to political fallout for Arkansas congressman
Representative Wilbur D. Mills, a Democrat from Arkansas, resigns as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in the aftermath of the first truly public sex scandal in American politics. On October 7, 1974, at 2 a.m., Mills was stopped by park police while driving at night with ...read more