Ronald Reagan 
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SOURCE: The New Republic
5/3/2023
William Casey (Almost) Certainly Delayed the Release of Iran Hostages to Help Reagan
by Jonathan Alter, Gary Sick, Kai Bird and Stuart Eizenstat
It has long been suspected that Reagan's campaign chief William Casey convinced Iran that they could get a better deal by releasing American hostages after the election of Ronald Reagan. Available documents, recent interviews, and the vast circumstantial evidence present a damning case, argues a team of policy vets and journalistic experts on the Carter years.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
4/26/2023
How the Reagan Administration Used "A Nation at Risk" to Push for School Privatization
by Valerie Strauss and James Harvey
One of the educators who served on the commission that developed an influential report on the state of American education argues that the report was built to serve an anti-public school ideology, and that its conclusions were a foundation for the culture war battles over schooling today.
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SOURCE: Foreign Policy
4/16/2023
New Official Bio Claims Big Role for Secretary of State George Shultz in Ending the Cold War
Philip Taubman's new biography portays Shultz as a key figure in pushing Reagan to move closer to Soviet leadership, albeit one who was content to work in the background.
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SOURCE: New York Times
3/18/2023
I Helped John Connally Try to Delay the Release of the Iran Hostages
The New York Times recently reported the claim by Ben Barnes that he and the former Texas governor toured the middle east in 1980 to try to delay the release of hostages to help Ronald Reagan win election.
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3/20/2023
H.W. Brands on Ben Barnes's "Revelation" about the Iran Hostage Crisis
"In effect, Connally and Casey were telling the Iranians not to do something the Iranians had no intention of doing."
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SOURCE: Politico
8/26/2022
Nicole Hemmer: Trump Didn't Kill off Reaganism—Reagan's Contemporaries Did
Why, as Republicans touted the legacy of Ronald Reagan, have they moved further from his sunny rhetoric and international engagement toward a harder-edged nationalism?
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SOURCE: Boston Review
4/5/2022
"Father Knows Best": Anti-LGBTQ Legislation and the Patriarchy
by Judith Levine
The elision of children’s interests and parents’ rights is not just bad grammar, however. It is an expression of conservative “pro-family” ideology, which posits the family as an indivisible unit where everyone’s interests are unanimous.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
11/26/2021
Reagan's Go-To Magazine Has Gone Full MAGA – What it Means for Conservatism
"The renaissance of the magazine provides the perfect capsule summary of the conservative movement’s long downward journey from pages to pixels."
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11/21/2021
Perlstein's "Reaganland" Sheds New Light on a Familiar Story
by Ron Steinman
Rick Perlstein's "Reaganland" captures details of the 1980 campaign that weren't obvious even to political journalists covering Reagan's ultimately successful mission to take the conservative movement to the White House.
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SOURCE: Teen Vogue
11/18/2021
We're Still Living with the Consequences of Letting Iran-Contra Perpetrators Get Away with It
by Zeb Larson
An explainer on the Iran-Contra affair, and why the failure to hold wrongdoers accountable shapes our politics today.
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10/24/2021
How the Republicans Became the Anti-Abortion Party, and What it Means for the GOP Today
by Donne Levy
Conservative evangelicals rode the abortion issue to a place of power in the Republican coalition. Will their success help or harm the party now that abortion rights are more imperiled than at any time since 1973?
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SOURCE: The American Prospect
8/5/2021
Is the PATCO Era Ending?
by Joseph A. McCartin
Forty years ago, Ronald Reagan's handling of the air traffic controllers' strike enshrined the era of union-busting. Can labor start to recover now?
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
5/12/2021
The U.S. Role in the El Mozote Massacre Echoes in Today’s Immigration
by Nelson Rauda and John Washington
Renewed efforts to prosecute the perpetrators of the 1981 El Mozote massacre of Salvadoran civilians during the civil war will further demonstrate American involvement in the perpetuation of inequality and violence in Central America and, the authors argue, the hypocrisy of US immigration policy.
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SOURCE: New York Times
5/1/2021
Joe Biden, the Reverse Ronald Reagan
Is the Biden administration's response to the crises affecting America more than a collection of programs and initiatives? Is the Democratic party moving to firmly repudiate Ronald Reagan's quip that "government is the problem"?
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4/25/2021
"The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III" by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser
by James Thornton Harris
Peter Baker and Susan Glasser's biography of the influential Republican political dealmaker at the heart of the Reagan-Bush era offers a compelling account of James A. Baker's career, but shows him to have been more motivated by power than by a vision of its uses.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
Nancy Reagan’s Real Role in the AIDS Crisis
Washington journalist Karen Tumulty writes that Nancy Reagan worked against the demands of social conservatives to ask her husband's administration to pay attention to the AIDS crisis, but her efforts weren't enough.
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4/11/2021
Political Precedent for the Trump Cult of Personality
by Donne Levy
Their differences in character and personality should not obscure similarities between Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. Both men's ability to flout the truth and survive serious scandals, plus their dalliances with white racism, make their political careers resemble cults of personality.
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3/7/2021
When Did America Stop Being Great?
by Nick Bryant
Nick Bryant began observing America as a 16 year old at the patriotic spectacle of the 1984 Olympics. His book traces the path from "Morning in America" to "American Carnage," fixing some blame but also seeking a way through.
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2/28/2021
George Shultz: The Last Progressive
by Ron Schatz
"A steadfast Republican committed to union-management cooperation, peace through treaties, competitive capitalism, and empowerment of African-Americans, George Shultz was the last old-fashioned Progressive."
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SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
11/12/2020
‘The Reagans’ Review: Challenging a Leader’s Legacy
If the new Showtime documentary wishes to undermine the legacy of Ronald Reagan, one reviewer suggests it ultimately makes the 40th President more sympathetic and appealing.
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